Gouverneur Morris

by Theodore Roosevelt

Jay at this time, having been successively a member of the Continental Congress, the New York Legislature, and the State Constitutional Convention, having also been the first chief justice of his native state, and then president of the Continental Congress, had been sent as our minister to Spain. Morris always kept up an intimate correspondence with him. It is noticeable that the three great revolutionary statesmen from New York, Hamilton, Jay, and Morris, always kept on good terms, and always worked together; while the friendship between two, Jay and Morris, was very close.

The two men, in their correspondence, now and then touched on other than state matters. One of Jay's letters which deals with the education of his children would be most healthful reading for those Americans of the present day who send their children to be brought up abroad in Swiss schools, or English and German universities. He writes: "I think the youth of every free, civilized country should be educated in it, and not permitted to travel out of it until age has made them so cool and firm as to retain their national and moral impressions. American youth may possibly form proper and perhaps useful friendships in European seminaries, but I think not so probably as among their fellow-citizens, with whom they are to grow up, whom it will be useful for them to know and be early known to, and with whom they are to be engaged in the business of active life.... I do not hesitate to prefer an American education." The longer Jay stayed away, the more devoted he became to America. He had a good, hearty, honest contempt for the miserable "cosmopolitanism" so much affected by the feebler folk of fashion. As he said he "could never become so far a citizen of the world as to view every part of it with equal regard," for "his affections were deep-rooted in America," and he always asserted that he had never seen anything in Europe to cause him to abate his prejudices in favor of his own land.

Jay had a very hard time at the Spanish court, which, he wrote Morris, had "little money, less wisdom, and no credit." Spain, although fighting England, was bitterly jealous of the United States, fearing most justly our aggressive spirit, and desiring to keep the lower Mississippi valley entirely under its own control. Jay, a statesman of intensely national spirit, was determined to push our boundaries as far westward as possible; he insisted on their reaching to the Mississippi, and on our having the right to navigate that stream. Morris did not agree with him, and on this subject, as has been already said, he for once showed less than his usual power of insight into the future. He wrote Jay that it was absurd to quarrel about a country inhabited only by red men, and to claim "a territory we cannot occupy, a navigation we cannot enjoy." He also ventured the curiously false prediction that, if the territory beyond the Alleghanies should ever be filled up, it would be by a population drawn from the whole world, not one hundredth part of it American, which would immediately become an independent and rival nation. However, he could not make Jay swerve a handsbreadth from his position about our western boundaries; though on every other point the two were in hearty accord.

In relating and forecasting the military situation, Morris was more happy. He was peculiarly interested in Greene, and from the outset foretold the final success of his Southern campaign. In a letter written March 31, 1781, after the receipt of the news of the battle of Guilford Court-house, he describes to Jay Greene's forces and prospects. His troops included, he writes, "from 1,500 to 2,000 continentals, many of them raw, and somewhat more of militia than regular troops,—the whole of these almost in a state of nature, and of whom it ought to be said, as by Hamlet to Horatio, 'Thou hast no other revenue but thy good spirits to feed and clothe thee.'" The militia he styled the "fruges consumere nati of an army." He then showed the necessity of the battle being fought, on account of the fluctuating state of the militia, the incapacity of the state governments to help themselves, the poverty of the country ("so that the very teeth of the enemy defend them, especially in retreat,"), and above all, because a defeat was of little consequence to us, while it would ruin the enemy. He wrote: "There is no loss in fighting away two or three hundred men who would go home if they were not put in the way of being knocked on the head.... These are unfeeling reflections. I would apologize for them to any one who did not know that I have at least enough of sensibility. The gush of sentiment will not alter the nature of things, and the business of the statesman is more to reason than to feel." Morris was always confident that we should win in the end, and sometimes thought a little punishment really did our people good. When Cornwallis was in Virginia he wrote: "The enemy are scourging the Virginians, at least those of Lower Virginia. This is distressing, but will have some good consequences. In the mean time the delegates of Virginia make as many lamentations as ever Jeremiah did, and to as good purpose perhaps."

The war was drawing to an end. Great Britain had begun the struggle with everything—allies, numbers, wealth—in her favor; but now, towards the close, the odds were all the other way. The French were struggling with her on equal terms for the mastery of the seas; the Spaniards were helping the French, and were bending every energy to carry through successfully the great siege of Gibraltar; the Dutch had joined their ancient enemies, and their fleet fought a battle with the English, which, for bloody indecisiveness, rivaled the actions when Van Tromp and De Ruyter held the Channel against Blake and Monk. In India the name of Hyder Ali had become a very nightmare of horror to the British. In America, the centre of the war, the day had gone conclusively against the Island folk. Greene had doggedly fought and marched his way through the Southern States with his ragged, under-fed, badly armed troops; he had been beaten in three obstinate battles, had each time inflicted a greater relative loss than he received, and, after retiring in good order a short distance, had always ended by pursuing his lately victorious foes; at the close of the campaign he had completely reconquered the Southern States by sheer capacity for standing punishment, and had cooped up the remaining British force in Charleston. In the Northern States the British held Newport and New York, but could not penetrate elsewhere; while at Yorktown their ablest general was obliged to surrender his whole army to the overwhelming force brought against him by Washington's masterly strategy.

Yet England, hemmed in by the ring of her foes, fronted them all with a grand courage. In her veins the Berserker blood was up, and she hailed each new enemy with grim delight, exerting to the full her warlike strength. Single-handed she kept them all at bay, and repaid with crippling blows the injuries they had done her. In America alone the tide ran too strongly to be turned. But Holland was stripped of all her colonies; in the East, Sir Eyre Coote beat down Hyder Ali, and taught Moslem and Hindoo alike that they could not shake off the grasp of the iron hands that held India. Rodney won back for his country the supremacy of the ocean in that great sea-fight where he shattered the splendid French navy; and the long siege of Gibraltar closed with the crushing overthrow of the assailants. So, with bloody honor, England ended the most disastrous war she had ever waged.

The war had brought forth many hard fighters, but only one great commander,—Washington. For the rest, on land, Cornwallis, Greene, Rawdon, and possibly Lafayette and Rochambeau, might all rank as fairly good generals, probably in the order named, although many excellent critics place Greene first. At sea Rodney and the Bailli de Suffren won the honors; the latter stands beside Duquesne and Tourville in the roll of French admirals; while Rodney was a true latter-day buccaneer, as fond of fighting as of plundering, and a first-rate hand at both. Neither ranks with such mighty sea-chiefs as Nelson, nor yet with Blake, Farragut, or Tegethof.

All parties were tired of the war; peace was essential to all. But of all, America was most resolute to win what she had fought for; and America had been the most successful so far. English historians—even so generally impartial a writer as Mr. Lecky—are apt greatly to exaggerate our relative exhaustion, and try to prove it by quoting from the American leaders every statement that shows despondency and suffering. If they applied the same rule to their own side, they would come to the conclusion that the British empire was at that time on the brink of dissolution. Of course we had suffered very heavily, and had blundered badly; but in both respects we were better off than our antagonists. Mr. Lecky is right in bestowing unstinted praise on our diplomatists for the hardihood and success with which they insisted on all our demands being granted; but he is wrong when he says or implies that the military situation did not warrant their attitude. Of all the contestants, America was the most willing to continue the fight rather than yield her rights. Morris expressed the general feeling when he wrote to Jay, on August 6, 1782: "Nobody will be thankful for any peace but a very good one. This they should have thought on who made war with the Republic. I am among the number who would be extremely ungrateful for the grant of a bad peace. My public and private character will both concert to render the sentiment coming from me unsuspected. Judge, then, of others, judge of the many-headed fool who can feel no more than his own sorrowing.... I wish that while the war lasts it may be real war, and that when peace comes it may be real peace." As to our military efficiency, we may take Washington's word (in a letter to Jay of October 18, 1782): "I am certain it will afford you pleasure to know that our army is better organized, disciplined, and clothed than it has been at any period since the commencement of the war. This you may be assured is the fact."

Another mistake of English historians—again likewise committed by Mr. Lecky—comes in their laying so much stress on the help rendered to the Americans by their allies, while at the same time speaking as if England had none. As a matter of fact, England would have stood no chance at all had the contest been strictly confined to British troops on the one hand, and to the rebellious colonists on the other. There were more German auxiliaries in the British ranks than there were French allies in the American; the loyalists, including the regularly enlisted loyalists as well as the militia who took part in the various Tory uprisings, were probably more numerous still. The withdrawal of all Hessians, Tories, and Indians from the British army would have been cheaply purchased by the loss of our own foreign allies.

The European powers were even a shade more anxious for peace than we were; and to conduct the negotiations for our side, we chose three of our greatest statesmen,—Franklin, Adams, and Jay.