Conceived in Liberty (224 page)

A more successful effort to import powder came in April 1776 after the American seizure of Dorchester Heights and the British evacuation of Boston. French and Dutch merchants became far more optimistic about rebel chances, and promptly began to sell a steady and abundant flow of powder to the Americans, using the entrepôts of St. Eustatius (Dutch West Indies) and Martinique (French West Indies) to exchange European gunpowder for Virginia and Maryland tobacco. Large, though necessarily sporadic, shipments of arms and ammunition also came from Spain to the back country of Virginia by way of Havana and the port of New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana. So abundant was the flow of imports after April 1776 that the colonies had no further worries about a shortage of gunpowder.

For other types of arms and ammunition, American domestic sources were far superior. Particularly important was the rapidly growing iron industry of Pennsylvania. From producing only one-seventieth of the world’s crude iron (bar and pig iron) in 1700, the American colonies produced 30,000 tons in 1775—one-seventh of the world’s output and exceeding the iron production of England. Pennsylvania, with its abundance
of iron ore, timber for fuel, and access to nearby markets, was preeiminent in iron output. Southeastern Pennsylvania had no fewer than seventy-three iron furnaces and forges, the largest and most numerous being in Berks County, north of the Schuylkill River. Hence, during the winter of 1775–76, Pennsylvania manufactured over four thousand stand of arms. Other major centers of iron manufacture were in northwestern New Jersey, around Lake Hopatcong, northwestern Connecticut, around Salisbury, northeastern Maryland, and—after 1775—in various parts of Virginia, and together they produced another four thousand stand of arms.

In contrast to the production of crude iron, the manufacture of finished iron had been restricted—though only slightly in practice—by the British Iron Act of 1750. The stimulus of war contracts, however, quickly spurred the construction of iron foundries in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, and especially in Pennsylvania, and village blacksmiths and other artisans were fully competent to turn their attention to finished iron for the war effort. The Americans also benefited from zinc deposits in northwestern New Jersey and copper mines in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. As a consequence, the army suffered no shortages of iron, rifles, muskets, or ammunition. American cannon, however, proved far inferior to European, and the rebels quickly placed their reliance on cannon, whether iron or brass, imported from France or captured from the British.

There was one vital ingredient of ammunition, however, that
was
short during the war: lead. So scarce was lead that as early as June 1775 the Continental Congress pleaded with the provinces to open up governmental lead mines. Several colonies tried this desperate experiment, but, as might be expected, the results were failures: yieldless mines, as in New York, or marginal mines, as in middle Connecticut. This should have been expected, for any useful lead mines would have been discovered and exploited by private enterprise. The only workable lead mines were operating in southwestern Virginia (near what is now Austinville). By the summer of 1776, the Americans were stripping lead from clocks and windows to provide the Continental Army.

Of the food products, we have seen that the major item in short supply was salt. While some salt could be imported from the West Indies, the Americans also constructed makeshift factories along the coast to make salt from evaporated sea water. This was a basically uneconomic process to be sure, but was made temporarily profitable by the high price of salt caused by the scarcity of supply. Thus when market prices were permitted to rise, the wartime shortage of salt created its own partial corrective.

Also cut off by the war was a very large amount of textiles for clothing imported from Great Britain, but this drastic cut was nearly compensated by large increases in household manufactures of homespun cloth, as well
as by seizures by privateers. In New England and the middle provinces, farmers with ready flexibility increased their household production of woolen and linen cloth. In the South, farmers and planters increased their output of homespun linens, cottons, and linsey-woolsey. And many back-country settlers simply wore their deerskin clothing as before.

To open the ports of America to trade for munitions and with the West Indies the Americans were required to take a step toward independence almost as momentous as throwing open the ports in defiance of the navigation acts: they had to negotiate as a separate country with the European countries supplying the munitions, especially with the major supplier, France.

As early as July 1775 the Continental Congress began its first diplomatic efforts by sidestepping the British government and speaking directly to their fellow subjects. An address stating its wish for equal liberty was sent to the City of London. Appeals to the people of Canada and Jamaica to join in the colonial cause, and a particularly noteworthy address sent to the people of Ireland, were the first attempts to export the revolution overseas. Congress noted the grievances of the Irish under British rule, and suggested that both peoples should engage in a common struggle for liberty, albeit within the framework of the British Empire. The subservient Irish Parliament, however, merely moved to endorse the British war of suppression against the colonies.

At the same time Congress was moving toward liberty and independence, however, it was taking some steps at home toward oligarchic rule Of necessity, it had already begun to function through various standing committees to discharge its vital responsibilities for the war effort. Generally these functioned under the strict control of Congress itself and were always open to its guidance and supervision. But in late 1775 Congress created two “secret committees,” and as their name implies, they acted in
secret and on their own initiative, without checking with Congress. Instead, Congress only had the power (largely unexercised) to ask for their records at its discretion. A great deal of working power was thereby put into the hands of a few men who dealt, furthermore, in the particularly sensitive area of foreign affairs. On September 18 Congress created the nine-man Secret Committee to handle the deals with foreign countries for munitions; on November 29 it created the five- (later six-) man Committee of Secret Correspondence, to correspond “with our friends” abroad. An omen for the future was the highly conservative complexion of the Committee of Secret Correspondence, consisting of John Jay, John Dickinson, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Johnson, who were archconservatives, and Benjamin Franklin, a thoroughgoing opportunist with highly conservative instincts. The establishment of this committee came as a response to the prodding by John Adams, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Chase of Maryland to open full diplomatic relations with France.

Soon the two secret committees were able to work very closely and cozily together. This close working relationship was embodied in the person of the young Philadelphia merchant Robert Morris, destined to become the great Mephistophelean figure of the revolutionary era. At the turn of the year, he became a member of both committees; he virtually ran the Committee of Secret Correspondence himself throughout 1776 and quickly became the leading figure in the Secret Committee. He was, in fact, to serve as the second chairman of the latter committee, succeeding his friend and partner, Thomas Willing of the firm of Willing and Morris. Thus catapulted to the very seat of power in the American colonies, the highly conservative Morris was able to make himself the center of a veritable plunderbund, which unabashedly and systematically looted the public purse for their private profit.

One of the first deeds of the Secret Committee was to substitute for regular market purchases a system of contracting—the ancestor of modern “cost-plus” government contracts. Under this system some favored firms were selected by the government to purchase (or to produce) certain goods, which the government pledges to buy at a rate that will give the merchants a guaranteed margin of profit, a lucrative special privilege eagerly fought for by business then and since. The Secret Committee established a handsome rate of profit on such mercantile purchases and often advanced the merchants the initial capital to buy the supplies. Moreover, Congress had thoughtfully allowed only merchants specifically to purchase supplies abroad, and as we have seen, this condition obtained until April 1776. This authorization came from the Secret Committee, and it was soon clear enough that control of this committee was the open sesame to special privilege and high guaranteed fortunes to be made out of the revolutionary effort.

Control of the committee Morris and Willing had, and they lost no time in exploiting their position. One of the first acts of the committee was to grant heavy contracts to the firm of Willing and Morris. These commission contracts were not the only form of subsidy the company enjoyed. The committee now quickly granted it a startling contract for supplying gunpowder, guaranteeing a high flat price of fourteen dollars a barrel,
whether or not
the powder reached American stores safely! This assured Willing and Morris a clear profit of $60,000 without even a fleeting risk of loss.

Other members of the Secret Committee also came in for their share of the loot. John Langdon of New Hampshire provided contracts to his own firm; Philip J. Livingston routed contracts to Livingston and Turnbull of New York; Silas Deane of Connecticut furnished commissions to his brother Barnabas. But heading the associates in plunder were Willing and Morris. All in all, the Secret Committee paid out over $2 million in war contracts from 1775 to 1777, and of these nearly $500,000, or one-fourth of all disbursements, went directly to the firm of Willing and Morris. Morris also directly shared with fellow members of the committee the largesse of nearly $300,000 in other contracts. Morris and Willing soon established a far-flung network of agents and followers, including leading merchants Benjamin Harrison (a member of the Committee of Secret Correspondence) and Carter Braxton, both of whom consequently received handsome contracts from the Secret Committee. Two particularly important committee agents were soon to double as congressional envoys to the French, William Bingham of Philadelphia, and Silas Deane of Westfield, Connecticut.

Deane was a prototype of the young lawyer with a keen eye to the main chance. He had launched his career by marrying the widow of a wealthy merchant, then capped that by divorcing her and marrying a member of the powerful Saltonstall family, thus getting himself profitably launched in Connecticut politics. Hardly had he latched onto a good thing in the operations of the Secret Committee, however, when the ungrateful voters of Connecticut unceremoniously turned him out of Congress in the elections of October 1775. But the lame-duck congressman continued to stay in Philadelphia, knowing that he would soon be taken care of. His expectations were not to be disappointed.

Great Britain, by its aggressive expansion of over two centuries, culminating in the conquest and arrogant seizure of shipping during the Seven Years’ War, had gravely alienated the other powers of Europe. Particularly bitter at England was France, crushed by the Pittite war and the peace of 1763. France, of course, especially welcomed the American Revolution and its prospects of trouble and even loss of the colonies for Great Britain. A reduction in British power would benefit France and the
other countries of Europe, and would guard France against any possible resumption of a Carthaginian War against her by a united Anglo-American Empire under another Chatham ministry.

During the summer of 1775, the dashing young dramatist Caron de Beaumarchais, an agent of the French government in London, was able to make contact with many British and American radicals. On the basis of his information, he predicted turbulence in Britain and urged some understanding between France and the American revolutionaries. The shrewd French foreign minister Comte de Vergennes thereupon sent to the American colonies a secret agent, Achard de Bonvouloir. Without making any definite commitments of French aid, Bonvouloir was to assure the Americans that France had no designs for reconquest of Canada, had nothing but admiration for the American revolutionary efforts, and would welcome American commerce in French ports.

The Committee of Secret Correspondence had been recently established by Congress, and Bonvouloir met privately with it to convey the French assurances to the rebels. In its turn, the committee was eager to convince the French that Congress was moving toward independence, and thus spur French aid to the revolutionary cause. In early March, despite the absence of a declaration of independence, the committee decided to send a secret agent to France as its envoy to bid for French aid. This envoy was Silas Deane, who arrived at Paris in early July 1776 in the guise of a private merchant. He was able to use his crucial position in the procurement of munitions to serve also as an agent of the firm of Willing and Morris. There Deane was able to draw many influential French financiers and officials into the Morris-Willing network. Deane and Morris employed the network to plunder public activities systematically for their private profit. In addition to granting themselves contracts, public ships and wagons were freely and abundantly used to convey their private cargoes without charge. Accounts were scarcely kept and remained virtually unsupervised, and thus Deane and Morris were able to engage in large-scale outright peculation of American funds. In 1776, on one contract alone, the government advanced Morris the large sum of $80,000 to buy goods abroad. Even though the goods were never delivered, Morris never returned the money. Furthermore, purchases on public account were given a back seat by Morris and his group in preference to their strictly private transactions.

Before the dispatch of Deane, the Committee of Secret Correspondence was able to engage secret agents living abroad. The separate colonies had employed six agents in London; of these two were members of Parliament and hence effectively ineligible for further work, one became a Tory actively serving the British cause, one resigned, and one (Franklin) had been forced to return home. This left the learned Massachusetts radical
Arthur Lee, Richard Henry Lee’s brother, who became a secret agent of the Committee of Secret Correspondence in mid-December. The committee also engaged an old friend of Franklin’s living at The Hague, Charles W. F. Dumas, to work for it in Holland.