Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations

by William Elliot Griffis

The absorption of Johnson’s mind in his multifarious labours and in the interests of the community in which he lived, scarcely gave him time to study carefully the great political movements leading to the Revolution. The time had now come when the continued folly of the king and Parliament acting as irritant and stimulant upon people in whom a love of freedom was inborn, was to result in independence. The long training in the border wars had educated a generation of soldiers who did not fear to meet either the mercenaries or the regulars of Great Britain, while also well able to profit by the mistakes of the king’s agents, and to organize government for themselves. On the civil side, the people of New England, led and trained by Congregational clergymen rather than by lawyers, were educated into the idea of resistance to the king and Parliament on grounds of abstract right. In the Middle and Southern States regularly educated publicists and lawyers trained in England were much more numerous. The continued invasion by the king of their rights as Englishmen was their theme; and resistance was made, and final victory expected, not by revolution, but through the right application of the law and tradition which had been so often violated. In many of the colonies a well-grounded fear lest a politically organized church should be forced upon them, as well as hatred of England’s avaricious policy of holding the colonies as a close market, had also their influence in bringing about separation.

Johnson, too busily occupied to follow every step of the movements, yet sympathized with the people, even while sincerely loyal to the Crown. As member of the Council in New York City, he witnessed not only the frequent turbulent expressions of the populace, but also saw from the firm temper of the Assembly signs of the coming danger. While John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, and Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, were discussing the political situation and the principles at stake, the people of New York showed by their acts their constant determination to resist all invasion of their rights by either the king or his agent. The governor, Sir Henry Moore, who dissolved the Assembly in 1769, found out quickly that the members were re-elected by overwhelming majorities. His sudden death called to the office of acting governor, for the third time, Dr. Cadwallader Colden.

In the following March the political sky, already full of the portents of a coming storm, gathered a deeper blackness when the fact became known that the House of Commons in London had refused to receive the representative of the New York Assembly. In spite of prophetic warnings and wise cautions in Parliament, the determination to make merchandise of the colonies stupefied and debauched the conscience of the average lord and commoner of commercial England, as the opium question in China stupefies and debauches it yet. The government was as much determined on a war with the American colonies, and for much the same purpose, as so many of Great Britain’s later wars have been waged,—for the sake of maintaining trade. Of the twenty-five or thirty wars, even during Victoria’s reign, the majority have been for the purpose of forcing trade and making money. In a word, the war of King George and his Parliament in 1775 against the colonies was a shopkeeper’s war for a market. “British interests” then, as now, meant trade and profits. Johnson felt the injustice of the British Government’s acts when he wrote in 1769: “Whatever reason or justice there may be in the late steps, there is a probability of their being carried farther than a good man can wish.” Nevertheless, Sir William was wisely non-committal on the burning question.

The Sons of Liberty in New York became active and turbulent, and made the lives of ultra-loyalists, like Colden, a burden. The royal troops had been by his orders summoned to New York City, after he had been driven to take refuge in the fort on the outbreak of violence when the stamps arrived from England. These soldiers were now the targets of scorn, especially after the Assembly had refused indemnity to Colden, who kept on recommending them to supplicate the paternal tenderness of their gracious sovereign George. After concurring in the spirited resolutions of the Legislatures of Virginia and South Carolina, the Assembly had also defeated a cunning scheme to win from them a vote of money to support the king’s military forces.

The hatred between the soldiers and the Sons of Liberty burst into flame at the battle of Golden Hill, Jan. 18, 1770, in New York City, when the first blood of the American Revolution was spilled. The Sons of Liberty had erected an emblem of their freedom and hereditary rights. The liberty-pole, and their meetings with speeches under it, were survivals of the old custom of their Teutonic ancestors, who met in the folk moot under the chosen oak-trees in the forests of Germany before Christendom began. The liberty-pole with its spars was obnoxious to the redcoats, who with saw and gunpowder tried to destroy it. The citizens resisted, but the unarmed and unorganized mob broke before the charge of armed men with bayonets. Having finally succeeded in sawing the pole into kindling-wood, the military piled the fragments before the doors of the tavern where the Sons of Liberty met.

The citizens were now thoroughly roused, and on the 18th a riot broke out, in which clubs and cutlasses were used, and in which the soldiers were worsted; though several citizens were wounded, and one of them, a sailor, died. When at Golden Hill, or John Street, between Cliff Street and Burling Slip, the riot was stopped by the arrival of British officers, who ordered their men back to camp. Conspicuous in the affrays of next day were the sailors, who in revenge for the death of their comrade clubbed the soldiers and drove them out of the streets into their barracks. On the 5th of February a new liberty-pole was erected on ground purchased for the purpose, and it remained until 1776.

The Sons of Liberty succeeded in carrying out the non-importation act so vigourously that the market became empty of goods used as presents to the Indians. Johnson was in danger of becoming seriously embarrassed. The Cherokees, who in January, 1770, intended to go to war with the tribes in the West and Southwest, wanted the Six Nations to join them. These at once resolved first to ask the advice of Johnson, who appointed a council at German Flats, hoping to win the Cherokees away from their purpose. Johnson was obliged to write to the chairman of the Sons of Liberty to get permission to receive or purchase a package invoiced to him which they held in bond, promising to use the goods only for the Indians. The request was cheerfully granted, and the goods delivered.

In company with Dr. Shuckburgh, who composed or introduced the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” Johnson met the Indians, half famished as they were on account of the failure of crops through caterpillars. The result of the council was that the Cherokees gave up their proposed war, and the treaty of Fort Stanwix was ratified in detail.

Perhaps it was from this incident that the New Yorkers prepared to dress themselves as Mohawk Indians, and tumble the tea into the waters of the East River, when it should come. On the 9th of July, hearing that all taxes, except upon tea, had been removed, the Committee of One Hundred agreed to receive all imports except tea. Johnson’s storehouses were now well stocked with imported Indian goods. Indian trade, which had come almost to a standstill, was resumed, much to the joy of all the Six Nations. The red men could not comprehend the white man’s politics, or realize that the love of money was the root of the evil of war also. They could not understand that titles of nobility, commissions in the army, stars, garters, decorations, and things most noble were peddled by government and purchased by money.

So rebellious a spirit as that manifested in New York must be rebuked, and so the king and his counsellors chose as the proper man to curb it, the infamous William Tryon. This Irishman had been an army officer, but through his wife’s influence obtained the post of lieutenant-governor of North Carolina in 1764; becoming governor in 1765. He was the fit tool of the kind of a king and parliament that ruled England at this time. Living while at Newbern, N. C., in amazing luxury, at the cost of the oppressively taxed colonists, he delighted in scorning their remonstrances and in crushing out their liberties. Goaded to desperation, the Sons of Liberty, after five years of vain petition for redress, met to the number of nearly two thousand on the banks of the Alamance River. Tryon marched out from his “palace” with an army of one thousand regular British troops, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, to suppress them. On the 15th of May, 1771, the Regulators, or Sons of Liberty, sent Tryon a message offering to lay down their arms if he would redress their grievances. Tryon advanced with the idea of scattering the patriots before the reinforcements coming from all parts of the province should encourage the Regulators. When within a hundred yards of the patriot ranks, his officers read the riot act. It was met by shouts of defiance. Tryon then ordered his men to fire. They hesitated. Rising in his stirrups, Tryon in a rage cried out, “Fire—on them, or on me,” at the same time discharging his pistol and felling a victim. In the two hours’ musketry battle which ensued, the ammunition of the poorly armed patriots being soon exhausted, the decisive victory of Tryon was obtained when the artillery was ordered up, and the unequal contest decided by rounds of grape and canister. Twenty of the Sons of Liberty were left dead on the field, the wounded being carried off. Of Tryon’s men, sixty were killed or wounded.