The chief difficulty arose over the question of the treatment of American loyalists and the payment of British debts which had been confiscated in every colony. Shelburne insisted that there must be restoration of civil rights, compensation for damages, and a pledge against any future confiscations or disfranchisements for loyalists, and also demanded a provision for the payment of all debts due to British creditors. Here the negotiation hung in a long deadlock, for Franklin, Adams, and Jay were unanimously determined to concede no compensation for individuals whom they hated as traitors; while the British negotiators felt bound in honour not to abandon the men who had lost all and suffered every indignity and {124} humiliation as a penalty for their loyalty. At length, progress was made when Adams suggested that the question of British debts be separated from that of Tory compensation; so a clause was agreed upon guaranteeing the full payment of bona fide debts heretofore contracted.
Finally, after Franklin had raised a counter-claim for damages due to what he called the "inhuman burnings" of the British raids since 1778, it was agreed to insert a clause against any future confiscations or prosecutions of loyalists and to add that Congress should "earnestly recommend" to the States the restoration of loyalists' estates and the repealing of all laws against them. At the time the commissioners drew up this article, they must have known that the Congress of the United States had no power to enforce the treaty, and that any such recommendations, however "earnest," would carry no weight with the thirteen communities controlled by embittered rebels, who remembered every Tory, alive or dead, with execration. Nevertheless, it offered a way of escape, and the British representative signed, on November 30, 1782. The great contest was at an end.
When Franklin revealed to Vergennes that, unknown to the French court, the American commissioners had agreed on a {125} draft treaty, the French minister was somewhat indignant at the trick, and communicated his displeasure to his agent in America. This induced the easily worried Congress to instruct Livingston, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to write a letter censuring the commissioners; but, although Jay and Adams were hotly indignant at such servility, the matter ended then and there. Vergennes's displeasure was momentary, and the French policy continued as before. The European war was, in fact, wearing to its end. Already, in April, 1782, Admiral Rodney had inflicted a sharp defeat on De Grasse, capturing five of his vessels, including the flagship with the admiral himself. This, together with the extreme inefficiency of the Spanish fleet, put an end to the hope of further French gains in the West Indies. Before Gibraltar, also, the allied fleet of forty-eight vessels did not dare to risk a general engagement with a British relieving fleet of thirty, and when in September, 1782, a final bombardment was attempted, the batteries from the fort proved too strong for their assailants. The allies felt that they had accomplished all they could hope to, and agreed to terms of peace on January 20, 1783. France gained little beyond sundry West India Islands, but Spain profited to the extent of {126} regaining Minorca and also Florida. It was at best a defeat for England, and the Whig Ministry, which carried it through, was unable to prevent such an outcome.
The American peace was made the pretext for Shelburne's fall, since a coalition of dissatisfied Whigs and Tories united in March, 1783, to censure it, thereby turning out the Ministry. But, although Fox regained control of diplomatic matters and made some slight moves toward reopening negotiations, he had no serious intention of disturbing Shelburne's work, and the provisional treaty was made definitive on September 3, 1783—the day on which the French treaty was signed. Thus the Americans technically kept to the terms of their alliance with France in agreeing not to make a separate peace, but as a matter of fact hostilities had entirely ceased in America since January, 1783, and practically since the fall of the North Ministry. The British had remained quietly in New York and Charleston, withdrawing from all other points, and Washington with his small army stood at Newburg-on-the-Hudson. In October, 1783, the last British withdrew, taking with them into exile thousands of Tories who did not dare to remain to test the value of the clauses in the treaty of peace intended to protect them. So the last traces of the long contest disappeared, {127} and the United States entered upon its career.
The treaty, as must have been foreseen by the commissioners themselves, remained a dead letter so far as the Tories were concerned. Congress performed its part and gave the promised recommendation, but the States paid no heed. The loyalists were not restored to civil or property rights. The plain provision of the treaty prohibiting further legislation against loyalists was defied in several States, and additional disqualifications were placed upon those who dared to remain in the country. The provision regarding the payment of debts remained unfulfilled, since there was no mechanism provided in the treaty through which the article could be enforced. Only from the British government could the Tories receive any recompense for their sufferings, and there they were in part relieved. Very many received grants of land in Canada, where they formed a considerable part of the population in several districts. More went to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to receive similar grants. Others spent their days in England as unhappy pensioners, forgotten victims of a war which all Englishmen sought to bury in oblivion. Those who remained in the United States ultimately regained standing and fared better than the exiles, but not until new {128} domestic issues had arisen to obliterate the memory of revolutionary antagonisms.
With the Treaty of 1782, the mother country and the former colonies definitely started on separate paths, recognizing the fundamental differences which for fifty years had made harmonious co-operation impossible. England remained as before, aristocratic in social structure, oligarchic in government, military and naval in temper—a land of strongly fixed standards of religious and political life, a country where society looked to a narrow circle for leadership. Its commercial and economic ideals, unaltered by defeat, persisted to guide national policy in peace and war for two more generations. The sole result of the war for England was to render impossible in future any such perversion of Cabinet government as that which George III, by intimidation, fraud, and political management, had succeeded for a decade in establishing. Never again would the country tolerate royal dictation of policies and leaders. England became what it had been before 1770, a country where parliamentary groups and leaders bore the responsibility and gained the glory or discredit, while the outside public approved or protested without seeking in any other manner to control the destinies of the State. While the English thus sullenly fell back into their {129} accustomed habits, the former Colonies, now relieved from the old-time subordination, were turned adrift to solve problems of a wholly different sort.
CHAPTER VII
THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1781-1798
The British colonists, who assumed independent legal existence with the adoption of Articles of Confederation in 1781, had managed to carry through a revolution and emerge into the light of peace. They were now required to learn, in the hard school of experience, those necessary facts of government which they had hitherto ignored, and which, even in the agonies of civil war, they had refused to recognize.
Probably with three-quarters of the American people, the prevailing political sentiment was that of aversion to any governmental control, coupled with a deep-rooted jealousy and distrust of all officials, even those chosen by and dependent upon themselves. Their political ideals contemplated {130} the government of each colony chiefly by the elected representatives of the voters, who should meet annually to legislate and tax, and then, having defined the duties of the few permanent officers in such a way as to leave them little or no discretion, should dissolve, leaving the community to run itself until the next annual session. Authority of any kind was to them an object of traditional dread, even when exercised by their own agents. The early State constitutions concentrated all power in the legislature, leaving the executive and judicial officials little to do but execute the laws. The only discretionary powers enjoyed by governors were in connection with military affairs.