The Wars Between England and America

by Theodore Clarke Smith

On the English side the most valuable study is in W. E. H. LECKY, England in the Eighteenth Century, vols. iii, iv (1878), a penetrating and impartial analysis. The Whig view appears in SIR G. O. TREVELYAN, The American Revolution, 3 vols. (1899-1907); LORD MAHON, England in the Eighteenth Century, vols. v-vii (1853-1854); and M. MARKS, England and America, 2 vols. (1907), while W. HUNT, Political History, 1760-1801 (1905), alone of recent writers, presents a Tory version of events.

Special works of value are C. STEDMAN, The American War, 2 vols. (1794), the authoritative English contemporary account of military events, and, among recent studies, J. W. FORTESCUE, History of the British Army, vol. iii (1902), which should be compared with H. B. CARRINGTON, Battles of the Revolution (1876); E. MCCRADY, South Carolina in the Revolution, 2 vols. (1901-2); E. J. LOWELL, The Hessians in the {252} Revolution (1884); J. B. PERKINS, France in the American Revolution (1911); C. H. VAN TYNE, The Loyalists (1902), and W. HERTZ, The Old Colonial System (1905). Of especial value are the destructive criticisms in C. F. ADAMS, Studies Military and Diplomatic (1911). The authoritative treatment of naval history is found in A. T. MAHAN, Influence of Sea Power (1890), and in the chapter by the same writer in W. L. CLOWES, History of the Royal Navy, vols. iii, iv (1898-1899).

Among leading biographies are those of Washington by H. C. LODGE (2 vols. 1890), by W. C. FORD (2 vols. 1900), and by GEN. B. T. JOHNSON (1894); of Franklin by J. PARTON (2 vols. 1864), by J. BIGELOW (3 vols. 1874), and by J. T. MORSE (1889); of Henry by M. C. TYLER (1887); of Samuel Adams by J. K. HOSMER (1885); of Robert Morris by E. P. OBERHOLZER (1903), and of Steuben by F. KAPP (1869). On the English side the Memoirs of Horace Walpole (1848); the Correspondence of George III with Lord North, ed. by W. B. DONNE (1867), are valuable and interesting, and some material may be found in the lives of Burke by T. McNIGHT (2 vols. 1858); of Shelburne by E. G. FITZMAURICE (2 vols. 1875); of Chatham by F. HARRISON (1905) and A. VON RUVILLE (3 vols. 1907); and of Fox by LORD JOHN RUSSELL (3 vols. 1859). The biographies of two governors of Massachusetts, C. A. POWNALL, Thomas Pownall (1908), and J. K. HOSMER, Thomas Hutchinson (1896), are of value as presenting the colonial Tory point of view.

For the period after 1783, the best reference book and the only one which attempts to trace in detail the motives of British as well as American statesmen is HENRY ADAMS, History of the United States, 9 vols. (1891). It is impartially critical, in a style of sustained and caustic vivacity. Almost equally valuable is A. T. MAHAN, Sea Power in Relation to the War of 1812, 2 vols. (1905), which contains the only sympathetic analysis of British naval and commercial policy, 1783-1812, beside being the authoritative work on naval events. The standard American works are J. SCHOULER, History of the United States, vols. i, ii (1882); J. B. MCMASTER, History of the People of the United States, vols. i-iv (1883-1895); R. HILDRETH, History of the United States, vols. ii-vi (1849-1862), and three volumes of the American Nation Series, J. S. BASSETT, The Federalist System; E. CHANNING, The Jeffersonian System, and K. C. BABCOCK, Rise of American Nationality (1906). On the English side there is little in the general histories beyond a chapter on American relations in A. ALISON, Modern Europe, vol. iv (1848), which accurately represents the extreme Tory contempt for the United States, but has no other merit. Works on Canadian history fill this {253} gap to a certain extent, such as W. KINGSFORD, History of Canada, vol. viii (1895).

Beside the work of Mahan (as above) the War of 1812 is dealt with by W. JAMES, Naval History of Great Britain, vols. v-vi (1823), a work of accuracy as to British facts, but of violent anti-American temper; and on the other side by J. F. COOPER, Naval History (1856), and T. ROOSEVELT, Naval War of 1812 (1883). Sundry special works dealing with economic and social questions involved in international relations are T. ROOSEVELT, Winning of the West, 4 vols. (1899-1902); W. CUNNINGHAM, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. iii (1893), and W. SMART, Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century (1910). Biographical material is to be found, in the lives of Washington (as above); of Jefferson by J. SCHOULER, (1897), and by J. T. MORSE (1883); of Hamilton by J. T. MORSE (1882), and F. S. OLIVER (1907); of Gallatin by H. ADAMS (1879); of Madison by G. HUNT (1903); of Josiah Quincy by E. QUINCY (1869). There is some biographical material to be found in BROUGHAM'S Life and Times of Lord Brougham, vol. iii (1872), and in S. WALPOLE, Life of Spencer Perceval, 2 vols. (1874), but for the most part the British version of relations with America after 1783 is still to be discovered only in the contemporary sources such as the Parliamentary History and Debates, the Annual Register, and the partly published papers of such leaders as Pitt, Fox, Grenville, Canning, Castlereagh and Perceval.

A useful sketch, giving prominence to the Treaty of Ghent and the
Rush-Bagot Agreement, and summarizing earlier and later events, is A
Short History of Anglo-American Relations and of the Hundred Years'
Peace, by H. S. PERRIS.

Documents and other contemporary material for the whole period may be conveniently found in W. MACDONALD, Select Charters (1904) and Select Documents (1898); in G. CALLENDER, Economic History of the United States (1909), and A. B. HART, American History told by Contemporaries, vols. ii, iii (1898, 1901).

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INDEX

Adams, John, in Revolution, 48, 57, 63, 71, 118-125;
after 1783, 142, 147, 155, 173-180
Adams, John Quincy, 237-241
Adams, Samuel, 32, 42, 50, 57, 63, 78, 131, 144
Adet, P. A., 172, 173
Alexander I, 190, 237
Alien and Sedition Acts, 176-180
Anti-Federalists, 143, 147
Armstrong, John, 223-230
Arnold, Benedict, 67, 81, 85, 104