These tiny republics were held together by a sort of faintly federative tie, which rested rather in a common understanding than upon any legal instrument, and whose observance was always subject to the passion of the moment. The communities which dwelt to the north-east, beyond the Vaal River, while distracted by internal feuds chiefly arising from personal or family enmities, were left undisturbed by the colonial government. They lived hundreds of miles from the nearest British outpost, and their wars with the Kafirs scarcely affected those tribes with whom the British authorities came in contact. Those authorities, as I have already observed, were in those days, under orders received from home, anxious rather to contract than to extend the sphere of imperial influence, and cared little for what happened far out in the wilderness, except whenever the action of the Boers induced troubles among the natives.
It was otherwise with the emigrants who lived to the south-west, between the Vaal River and the frontier of Cape Colony, which was then at the village of Colesberg, between what is now De Aar Junction and the upper course of the Orange River. Here there were endless bickerings between the Boers, the rapidly growing native tribe of the Basutos, and the half-breeds called Griquas, hunting clans sprung from Dutch fathers and Hottentot women, who, intermixed with white people, and to some extent civilized by the missionaries, were scattered over the country from where the town of Kimberley now stands southward to the junction of the Orange and Caledon rivers. These quarrels, with the perpetual risk of a serious native war arising from them, distressed a succession of governors at Cape Town and a succession of colonial secretaries in Downing Street. Britain did not wish (if I may use a commercial term not unsuited to her state of mind) "to increase her holding" in South Africa. She regarded the Cape as the least prosperous and promising of her colonies, with an arid soil, a population largely alien, and an apparently endless series of costly Kafir wars. She desired to avoid all further annexations of territory, because each annexation brought fresh responsibilities, and fresh responsibilities involved increased expenditure. At last a plan was proposed by Dr. Philip, a prominent missionary who had acquired influence with the government. The missionaries were the only responsible persons who knew much about the wild interior, and they were often called on to discharge functions similar to those which the bishops performed for the barbarian kings in western Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era. The societies which they represented commanded some influence in Parliament; and this fact also disposed the Colonial Office to consult them. Dr. Philip suggested the creation along the north-eastern border of a line of native states which should sever the Colony from the unsettled districts, and should isolate the more turbulent emigrant Boers from those who had remained quietly in the Colony. This plan was adopted. Treaties were made in 1843 with Moshesh, the Basuto chief, and with Adam Kok, a Griqua captain living on the Orange River, as a treaty had been made nine years before with another Griqua leader named Waterboer, who lived farther north (near the present site of Kimberley); and these three states, all recognized by Britain, were intended to cover the Colony on the side where troubles were most feared. But the arrangement soon broke down, for the whites would not recognize a Griqua captain, while the whole troubles between them and the natives continued. Accordingly, a forward step was taken in 1846 by placing a few British troops under a military resident at Bloemfontein, half-way between the Orange and Vaal rivers, to keep order there. And in 1848 the whole region from the Orange to the Vaal was formally annexed under the name of the Orange River Sovereignty. The country had been without any government, for the emigrants who dwelt in it had no organization of their own, and did not recognize the republics beyond the Vaal.
This formal assertion of British authority provoked an outbreak among those of the emigrants, all, or nearly all, of Boer stock, who clung to their independence. Roused and reinforced by their Boer brethren from beyond the Vaal, who were commanded by Andries Pretorius, the most energetic and capable of the emigrant leaders, and the same who had besieged the British troops at Port Natal, they attacked Bloemfontein, obliged the Resident's small force to capitulate, and advanced south to the Orange River. Sir Harry Smith, then Governor of the Cape, promptly moved forward a small force, defeated the Boers in a sharp skirmish at Boomplats (August 29, 1848), and re-established British authority over the Sovereignty, which was not, however, incorporated with Cape Colony. The Boers beyond the Vaal were left to themselves.
Peace, however, was not yet assured. Fresh quarrels broke out among the native tribes, ending in a war between the Basutos and the British Resident. Unsupported by a large section of the local farmers, who remained disaffected to the government, and preferred to make their own terms with the Basutos, and having only a trifling armed force at his command, the Resident fared ill; and his position became worse when Pretorius, still powerful beyond the Vaal, threatened to move in and side with the Basutos. Cape Colony was at that moment involved in a serious war with the Kafirs of the south coast, and could spare no troops for these northern troubles. So when Pretorius intimated that he and the northern Boers wished to make some permanent and pacific arrangement with Britain, which, though it did not claim their territory, still claimed their allegiance, commissioners were sent to negotiate with him and those of the northern or Transvaal group of emigrants who recognized his leadership, for there were other factions who stood apart by themselves. Thus in 1852 a convention was concluded at Sand River with "the commandant and delegates of the Boers living beyond the Vaal," by which the British government "guaranteed to the emigrant farmers beyond the Vaal River the right to manage their own affairs, and to govern themselves according to their own laws without any interference on the part of the British government," with provisions "disclaiming all alliances with any of the coloured nations north of the Vaal River," permitting the emigrants to purchase ammunition in the British colonies, and declaring that "no slavery is or shall be permitted or practised by the farmers in the country north of the Vaal River."
From this Sand River convention the South African Republic, afterward slowly formed out of the small communities which then divided the country, dates its independence; and by the same instrument it practically severed itself from the Boer emigrants who were left in the Orange River Sovereignty south of the Vaal, conduct which the republican party among these emigrants deemed a betrayal. That Sovereignty remained British, and probably would have so continued but for an unexpected incident. It was still vexed by the war with the Basutos, and when General Cathcart, who had now come out as Governor of the Cape, attacked Moshesh with a considerable force of British regulars, he was drawn into a sort of ambush in their difficult country, suffered a serious reverse, and would have been compelled to invade Basutoland afresh with a larger army had not Moshesh prudently asked for peace. Peace was concluded. But the British government was weary of these petty and apparently unending native wars, and soon after the news of the battle with Moshesh reached London, the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Aberdeen's government, in which he was colonial secretary, resolved to abandon the Sovereignty altogether.
To those who look back on 1853 with the eyes of 1899 this seems a strange determination, for the British crown had ruled the country for eight years and recently given it a regular new constitution. Moreover, whereas the farmers beyond the Vaal were nearly all of pure Boer stock, those in the Orange River Sovereignty were mixed with English settlers, and from their proximity to the Colony were much less averse to the British connection. In fact, a large part of them—though it is not now easy to discover the exact proportion—warmly resisted the proposal of the British government to retire, and independence had to be forced on them against their will. In Cape Colony, too, and among the missionaries, there was a strong repugnance to the policy of withdrawal. The authorities of the Colony and the Colonial Office at home were, however, inexorable. They saw no use in keeping territories which were costly because they had to be defended against native raids, and from which little benefit was then expected. Hardly any notice had been taken in Britain of the Sand River convention, which the Conservative ministry of that day had approved, and when, at the instance of delegates sent home by those who, in the Orange River territory, desired to remain subject to the British crown, a motion was made in the House of Commons asking the Queen to reconsider the renunciation of her sovereignty over that territory, the motion found no support and had to be withdrawn. Parliament, indeed, went so far as to vote forty-eight thousand pounds by way of compensation, in order to get rid of this large territory and a great number of attached subjects. So little did Englishmen then care for that South African dominion which they have subsequently become so eager to develop and extend.
By the convention signed at Bloemfontein on February 23, 1854, the British government "guaranteed the future independence of the country and its government," and its inhabitants were "declared, to all intents and purposes, a free and independent people." No slavery or trade in slaves was to be permitted north of the Orange River. The Orange River government was to be free to purchase ammunition in the British colonies, and liberal privileges in connection with import duties were to be granted to it.
These two conventions of 1852 and 1854 are epochs of supreme importance in South African history, for they mark the first establishment of non-British independent states, whose relations with the British colonies were thereafter to constitute the central thread in the annals of the country. As that of 1852 recognised the Transvaal State, so from that of 1854, which is a more explicit and complete declaration of independence than had been accorded to the Transvaal people two years before, dates the beginning of the second Boer republic, the Orange Free State, which, subsequently increased by the conquest from the Basutos of a strip of fertile territory in the south, has ever since remained perfectly independent and at peace with the British colonies. Its only serious troubles have arisen from native wars, and these have long ago come to an end. In 1854 an assembly of delegates enacted for it the republican constitution under which it has ever since been quietly and peaceably governed. It had the good fortune to elect, as its president, in 1865, a lawyer from Cape Colony, of Dutch extraction, Mr. (afterwards Sir) John Brand, who guided its course with great tact and wisdom for twenty-four years, and whose favourite expression, "All shall come right," now inscribed on his tombstone at Bloemfontein, has become throughout South Africa a proverbial phrase of encouragement in moments of difficulty.[22]
Beyond the Vaal river things have gone very differently. The farmers of that region were more scattered, more rude and uneducated, and more prone to factious dissensions than those of the Free State proved to be after 1854; and while the latter were compressed within definite boundaries on three sides, the Transvaal Boers were scattered over a practically limitless area. During the next twenty-five years the Transvaal people had very little to do with the British government. But they were distracted by internal feuds, and involved in almost incessant strife with the natives. These two sources of trouble brought their government, in 1877, to a condition of virtual collapse. But that collapse and the annexation which followed it belong to a later phase of South African history, and we must now turn from them to trace the progress of events in other parts of the country between 1852 and 1877.