Conceived in Liberty (150 page)

What! Another American history book? The reader may be pardoned for wondering about the point of another addition to the seemingly inexhaustible flow of books and texts on American history. One problem, as pointed out in the bibliographical essay at the end of Volume I, is that the survey studies of American history have squeezed out the actual stuff of history, the narrative facts of the important events of the past. With the true data of history squeezed out, what we have left are compressed summaries and the historian’s interpretations and judgments of the data. There is nothing wrong with the historian’s having such judgments; indeed, without them, history would be a meaningless and giant almanac listing dates and events with no causal links. But, without the narrative facts, the reader is deprived of the data from which he can himself judge the historian’s interpretations and evolve interpretations of his own. A major point of this and the other volumes is to put back the historical narrative into American history.

Facts, of course, must be selected and ordered in accordance with judgments of importance, and such judgments are necessarily tied into the historian’s basic world outlook. My own basic perspective on the history of man, and
a fortiori
on the history of the United States, is to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power, a conflict, by the way, which was seen with crystal clarity by the American revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories
of civilized life. But liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax, and exploit the fruits of liberty and production. Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear. And power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and violence: the state. With Albert Jay Nock, the twentieth-century American political philosopher, I see history as centrally a race and conflict betwen “social power”—the productive consequence of voluntary interactions among men—and state power. In those eras of history when liberty—social power—has managed to race ahead of state power and control, the country and even mankind have flourished. In those eras when state power has managed to catch up with or surpass social power, mankind suffers and declines.

For decades, American historians have quarreled about “conflict” or “consensus” as the guiding
leitmotif
of the American past. Clearly, I belong in the “conflict” rather than the “consensus” camp, with the proviso that I see the central conflict as not between classes (social or economic), or between ideologies, but between Power and Liberty, State and Society. The social or ideological conflicts have been ancillary to the central one, which concerns: Who will control the state, and what power will the state exercise over the citizenry? To take a common example from American history, there are in my view no inherent conflicts between merchants and farmers in the free market. On the contrary, in the market, the sphere of liberty, the interests of merchants and farmers are harmonious, with each buying and selling the products of the other. Conflicts arise only through the attempts of various groups of merchants or farmers to seize control over the machinery of government and to use it to privilege themselves at the expense of the others. It is only through and by state action that “class” conflicts can ever arise.

This volume deals with the stormy and fateful period from the end of the French and Indian War until the outbreak of war at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the period that incubated the American Revolution. With France driven from the North American continent, and with the classical liberal Whigs out of power, the British government moved quickly to impose a system of imperial control over the fractious and hitherto virtually independent colonies. These fifteen years are a record of mounting American resistance to such efforts by the mother country, a resistance that finally erupted into full-scale war at Lexington and Concord. Inspired by libertarian ideals, the colonists increasingly forged a unity that was to result in the first successful national revolution against Western imperialism in the modern world. Although other, largely unrelated, armed rebellions also erupted in this period—in North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, and Vermont—these years are essentially the story of the development of the American Revolution up to the outbreak of actual armed conflict.

My intellectual debts for this volume are simply too numerous to mention, especially since an historian must bring to bear not only his own discipline but also his knowledge of economics, of political philosophy, and of mankind in general. Here I would just like to mention, for his methodology of history, Ludwig von Mises, especially his much neglected volume,
Theory and History;
and Lord Acton, for his emphasis on the grievously overlooked moral dimension. For his political philosophy and general outlook on American history, Albert Jay Nock, particularly his
Our Enemy the State.

As for my personal debts, I am happy to be more specific. This series of volumes would never have been attempted, much less seen the light of day, without the inspiration, encouragement, and support provided by Kenneth S. Templeton, Jr., now of the Institute for Humane Studies, Menlo Park, California. I hope that he won’t be overly disappointed with these volumes. I am grateful to the Foundation for Foreign Affairs, Chicago, for enabling me to work full time on the volumes, and to Dr. David S. Collier of the Foundation for his help and efficient administration. Others who have helped with ideas and aid in various stages of the manuscript are Charles G. Koch and George Pearson of Wichita, Kansas, and Robert D. Kephart of
Libertarian Review,
Washington, D.C.

To my first mentor in the field of American history, Joseph Dorfman, now Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, I owe in particular the rigorous training that is typical of that keen and thorough scholar.

The last
chapter
in this volume was included at the suggestion of Roy A. Childs, Jr. of New York City.

But my greatest debt is to Leonard P. Liggio, of SONY, Old Westbury, whose truly phenomenal breadth of knowledge and insight into numerous fields and areas of history are an inspiration to all who know him. Liggio’s help was indispensable in the writing of this volume, in particular his knowledge of the European background.

Over the years in which this manuscript took shape, I was fortunate in having several congenial typists—in particular, Willette Murphy Klausner of Los Angeles, and the now distinguished intellectual historian and social philosopher, Dr. Ronald Hamowy of the University of Alberta. I would particularly like to thank Louise Williams of New York City for her heroic service of typing the entire manuscript in its final form.

The responsibility for the final product is, of course, wholly my own.

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD

February 1976

PART I
The British Army and the Western Lands
The Stage Is Set

By 1760, the great French and Indian War in America between Britain and France was over, with Britain the absolute master of Canada and of all the land east of the Mississippi. The peace treaty of 1763 between the belligerents in the world war (Britain, France, and Spain), known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War, completed the ouster of France from the North American continent. For Spain acquired France’s domain in Louisiana west of the Mississippi, in compensation for Britain’s acquisition of Florida from Spain.

The mighty British Empire now stood master of all it surveyed, and no place more so than in North America. Furthermore, the war had driven from power the peaceful Pelhamite Whigs—led by the Duke of Newcastle, who, along with his brother Henry Pelham and the previously ousted Robert Walpole, had managed to keep England on a course of minimal government and international peace, and of “salutary neglect” of the American colonies. These men had accomplished this feat against the reluctant opposition of Crown and Parliament. Salutary neglect had meant the conscious thwarting of Britain’s grand mercantilist design for controlling and restricting American commerce and industry for the benefit of British merchants and manufacturers. Furthermore, the Walpole-Newcastle policy of laissez-faire toward the colonies had allowed the representative colonial assemblies to wrest effective power from royally appointed governors by wielding the power of the purse over colonial taxes and appropriations, notably including the governors’ own salaries. Thus, from 1720 through the 1750s, the American colonies were virtually
de facto
independent of British imperial control, an independence bolstered by a libertarian spirit and ideology eagerly imbibed from the radical libertarian English writers and journalists of the period. The hostility of these writers to government
in general, and to the existing English government in particular—especially to its designs for power—keenly alerted the American colonists to the slightest signs of aggression by the mother country against their liberties.

For its part, the British government, seemingly all-powerful, was now freed both of the distractions of a two-decades-long conflict with France and of the salutary-neglect policies of the Pelhamite Whigs. The British were now free to bring the fractious American colonists to heel, to impose a comprehensive system of imperial British political and mercantilist control over the colonies. To her surprise, the mother country was to find that the Americans would not sit still while she imposed her grand design that would unleash her imperial power.

2
The Ohio Lands: Pontiac’s Rebellion

The first and immediate problem the British faced was what to do with the Ohio lands, which had been militarily conquered from the French by 1759. Since the European war with France was not to be ended for four more years, the Ohio lands would continue, at least temporarily, from 1759 on under British military occupation.

First to swing into action, with a claim to Ohio lands, was the Ohio Company. In 1749, the Ohio Company, a Virginia company headed by the president of the royally appointed Virginia Council, Thomas Lee, and including the Lee family, the Washington family, and George Mason, induced the Crown to direct Virginia to grant the company 200,000 acres of French-held land at the strategic forks of the Ohio River. Soon Robert Dinwiddie, royal governor of Virginia from 1751 to 1758, his patron, the powerful imperialist the Duke of Bedford, and the powerful Mercer and Carter families were added to the Ohio Company.

Now, with Britain in full military control of the Ohio lands, the Ohio Company naturally swung into action, putting pressure on the Crown and the military for acknowledgment of its claim. During 1760, officials of the company offered Colonel Henry Bouquet, commandant of Fort Pitt, a share in the company. The Ohio Company, however, met formidable resistance among British officialdom. The new governor of Virginia, Francis Fauquier, was trenchantly opposed to the Ohio Company and to land grants in general. Furthermore, the British militia dug in for a lengthy stay and constructed many more forts in the Ohio Valley. Finally, the Earl of Egremont, in November 1761, officially proclaimed a British policy of prohibiting all grants to settlements upon Indian lands, thus blocking the Ohio Company or any other settlement.

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