Independence (19 page)

Richard Lord Howe by John Singleton Copley. A British admiral who also sat in Parliament, Howe hoped for a negotiated settlement that would prevent war. He sought to find acceptable terms through talks with Benjamin Franklin in 1774–1775, and was sent to America as a “peace commissioner” in 1776. (Wikimedia Commons)

Franklin knew too that he was finished in London, and a few weeks later he sailed for home, ending a stay that had begun in late 1764. Just before he embarked, Franklin wrote Galloway a letter making clear that he already favored American independence. It was one of many things that Franklin divulged to his longtime political partner for the first time. Franklin declared his conviction that should the colonists remain in the British Empire, the mother country would “drag us after them in all the plundering wars which their desperate circumstances, injustice, and rapacity may prompt them to undertake.” He also expanded on the “extreme corruption … in this old rotten state,” adding that if the colonists remained tied to Great Britain, it “will only … corrupt and poison us.” Franklin, who twice in the past had urged Galloway to propose a compromise solution that might resolve the crisis and enable the colonists to remain happily within the British Empire, closed by saying that he had chosen to side with “our rising country,” America.
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North's cabinet finally met on January 13 to decide how to respond to its refractory colonists. In that meeting and two others, which followed in a span of eight days, the ministers recapitulated the pros and cons of going to war that they had considered the previous January. From the outset it was clear that the great majority thought there was no choice but to use force, though the ministers wished to employ a carrot-and-stick policy. At the January 21 session, held at the home of the Earl of Sandwich, the cabinet agreed to what it considered the carrot: Should the colonies in peacetime furnish the amount of revenue desired by London, and in time of “war contribute extraordinary supplies, in a reasonable proportion to what is raised by Great Britain,” Parliament would “desist from the exercise of the power of taxation, except for commercial purposes only.”
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The stick came next. Dartmouth sought to forestall the clash by pushing for sending commissioners to America to open discussions with the colonists, but the ministers were adamant. Not only had the king already rejected negotiations, but also nothing fruitful had come from the clandestine talks with Franklin. The cabinet took a hard line in its remaining steps. In reprisal for Congress's boycott of British trade, it agreed to deny the four Yankee colonies access to the fisheries off Newfoundland, a vital economic resource for New Englanders. The ministers also voted to reinforce the Royal Navy and the British army in Boston. The navy was to be augmented by 2,000 men. The cabinet initially agreed to send an additional three regiments to the army, but after further deliberation it decided to send four regiments and 400 marines as well as to bring Gage's existing regiments up to strength. The ministry anticipated that by early summer Gage's force would be nearly doubled, to 7,500 men. Though that would be only a third the number that he had requested, the ministers thought the army would have the manpower to suppress the rebellion in New England, which in turn, they were convinced, would bring to an end the American insurgency. Finally, North's government agreed to two steps that were guaranteed to provoke hostilities: Gage was to be ordered to use force and to seize the leaders of the rebel government in Massachusetts.
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It was cruelly ironic that it fell to Dartmouth, who for three years had been the ministry's most strenuous advocate for moderation and a peaceful resolution of the imperial crisis, to issue the order to go to war. He might have resigned rather than carry out such an unpalatable task, but he stayed on and did as the ministry wished, perhaps out of loyalty to his stepbrother. On January 27, 1775, Dartmouth ordered Gage to apply “a vigorous Exertion of … Force,” adding that if the colonists resisted, “Force should be repelled by Force.” Whereas Gage until now had “act[ed] upon the Defensive,” Dartmouth told the general that henceforth he was “to take a more active & determined” course, including “sending out Detachments of your Troops” into the interior of Massachusetts to smash the rebellion.

As so often had been the case in North's ministry, an air of unreality permeated Dartmouth's order. To the very end, the ministers had willfully ignored evidence that the situation in America was much more challenging than they acknowledged. Both Dartmouth and his fellow ministers, who insisted on reading and approving the order before it was dispatched, still held to the belief that a small “tumultuous Rabble” in New England was causing the American problem. They confidently believed that the use of force in Massachusetts would bring the other provinces to their senses. Dartmouth, like his colleagues, expected little in the way of a military challenge from the Americans. He broke the news to Gage that he would not be getting the twenty thousand men he wanted. However, as if in dreamland, Dartmouth nonsensically advised Gage that, as “a rude Rabble without plan, without concert, & without conduct” formed the core of the American rebellion, a small British army “would be able to encounter them with greater probability of Success than might be expected from a greater Army.” When Dartmouth issued the order that would launch the war, he and his colleagues appeared to believe that only “a single Action”—one that might “perhaps be accomplished without bloodshed”—would break the back of the American rebels. Even should the American insurgents choose war, Dartmouth added in closing, their resistance “cannot be very formidable.”
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Parliament faced two strikingly different alternatives with regard to America when it reconvened following the holidays. Five days after Dartmouth wrote the secret order to go to war, William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, the most esteemed public figure in Great Britain, introduced a plan of American conciliation in the House of Lords. The architect of victory in the Seven Years' War, Chatham was the Winston Churchill of eighteenth-century Britain and a revered figure in America, where his portrait hung in many homes, including Richard Henry Lee's Chantilly. Convinced that the ministry was guided by a flawed strategic vision for the empire, and equally certain that he could find the means of preserving the Anglo-American union, Chatham came forward in this crisis. Old and suffering from numerous physical debilities as well as melancholia, Chatham nevertheless summoned the energy to meet four times with Franklin in the course of preparing his plan for imperial salvation. Once he even was driven into London and called on the Pennsylvanian at his Craven Street residence, leading to a two-hour conversation in which Franklin informed Chatham of the details of Galloway's Plan of Union.
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Chatham was famous for his spellbinding oratory, and with all expecting that this would be his last great speech (which, in fact, it was), and with London awash with rumors that war was imminent, the peers must have listened with rapt attention as Chatham struggled to complete his address. He called his scheme a plan “for settling the Troubles in America.” Much of what he proposed was hardly distinguishable from that offered by Burke in the spring. Chatham not only left the limits of Parliament's authority unquestioned; he also stressed that it must continue to regulate imperial trade. However, he insisted that prudence dictated that Parliament no longer exercise its powers in matters where the colonists were competent to govern themselves. After indicating his opposition to American independence, Chatham got to his specific proposals. The army must be removed from Boston. Convinced that the Americans must bear some of the costs of empire, Chatham additionally proposed that the Continental Congress—which North's government regarded as illegal—make a “free grant … of a certain perpetual revenue,” which Parliament might use as it saw fit. Finally, Chatham urged the suspension of all parliamentary acts to which the Continental Congress had objected.

Chatham cautioned against going to war. The Americans will not back down, he warned. Possessed of the virtues of the English people, the Americans were motivated by a sense of honor and a belief in their natural rights and their rights as Englishmen. They “will not be slaves.” This “sleeping and confounded ministry” could not understand that, he declared. North's government seemed capable only of offering “plan[s] of mis-administration.” It was taking Great Britain into a war that could not be won by an army of forty thousand regulars. Rather than go to war, Great Britain must do something “that can restore America to our bosom: you must repeal her fears and her resentments; and you may then hope for her love and gratitude.” Parliament must understand that “taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours.” Parliament “must recognize … the Americans … supreme unalienable right in their property.”
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North spoke the following day for two hours. He largely ignored what Chatham had said. Instead, he unveiled a portion of the government's planned response to events in America. Asserting that Britons paid a tax burden fifty times greater than that borne by the American colonists, the prime minister pronounced it absurd for Massachusetts to rebel against meager taxes levied by Parliament. He declared that the law must be enforced, and he proclaimed that it would be. North revealed that military reinforcements were being sent to America, but he disclosed neither that Gage would be getting far fewer troops than he wanted nor that the general had been ordered to use force to crush the rebels. In the vaguest terms, North said that his government would attempt to redress American grievances once order had been restored. He closed by presenting the question that divided America and the mother country as lying “within a very narrow compass.” At issue, he said, was “whether we have or have not any authority in that country.” The nation, he added, must decide whether it wishes to abandon the claims of parliamentary sovereignty over America and “give up every advantage arising from … the sovereignty,” or whether Britain should “ensure” its hegemony over the colonies.

The issue was never in doubt. By large majorities in both houses, Chatham's plan was rejected, and over the next few days North's hard line was approved. The bills denying the New England colonies access to the fisheries and increasing the size of the navy in North America passed easily.
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Even so, it was widely appreciated that a large portion of the population was unhappy with the government's American policy. Lord Camden told North that he did not have “half of the nation on your side.” The prime minister did not disagree. In fact, he told the king that “the cause of Great Britain is not yet sufficiently popular.”
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With that in mind, North on February 20 made his final major address on the American crisis prior to hostilities. He presented the American taxation scheme that the cabinet had approved the previous month. Having earlier pushed for coercive measures, North in this speech made a show of offering the olive branch. Characterizing his remarks as “Propositions for conciliating the Differences with America,” the prime minister unveiled what came to be popularly known as the “North Peace Plan” or “North's Conciliatory Proposal.” In reality, North confided privately to George III his hope that his plan would cause “great utility … to arise to the publick” on “this side of the water.” In other words, his peace plan did not seek to avert war but to solidify public opinion in Great Britain behind the coming war. In private, he had already told the monarch that his plan “gives up no right” to the colonists.
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North told Parliament that his purpose was to uphold “the doctrine that every part of the empire was bound to bear its share of service and burthen in the common defense.” Revenue must be raised, and never more so than now, as the annual interest alone on the national debt totaled 1.8 million pounds. If the Americans persisted in denying the authority of Parliament, he went on, “we can enter into no negociation, we can meet no compromise.” But if the colonists through their assemblies should agree to contribute “their proportion to the common defense (such proportion to be raised [by each] … assembly … and disposable by parliament),” the government of Great Britain would “forbear … to levy any duty, tax, or assessment” on that colony. Furthermore, the colonial assemblies could raise the revenue by “any mode”—direct or indirect taxes, lotteries, land sales, whatever—they chose.
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North made clear that it was his intention to deal with each province separately. He never mentioned the Continental Congress. In fact, he categorically declared, “I am not treating with rebels.”
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He was advancing the doctrine that Crown and Parliament remained sovereign in every respect. The ministry and Parliament would make the key decisions. They would determine what constituted the common defense, how much revenue was to be raised annually, what percentage of the revenue would come from America, and how much was to be raised by each colony. Each colonial assembly would possess the authority only to decide how to raise the revenue that London had assigned as its quota. Parliamentary sovereignty remained at the heart of North's proposal. Furthermore, as one of Dartmouth's subministers remarked privately, under North's plan the Americans would have “no security” for London's lasting adherence to North's plan “but our own good faith.”
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North's so-called peace plan stirred remarkably little debate, though two MPs delivered especially striking speeches in opposition to the course the prime minister had outlined. Charles Pratt, 1st Baron Camden, spoke compellingly in the House of Lords. The sixty-two-year-old Camden had sat in two previous ministries. Though at times he had expressed his exasperation with the colonists, Camden never wavered in his opposition to the Declaratory Act. Over the past decade, he had opposed the stamp tax, Townshend Duties, Tea Act, and Coercive Acts. On March 16, with an air of doom dangling on every phrase, yet with greater clarity than was expressed by any other MP, Camden took the floor to warn against following the government's belligerent course. The “true character” of what North had proposed, he began, was “violent and hostile.… [I]t is a Bill of war; it draws the sword” and will plunge the empire into “the calamities of civil war.” Before resorting to hostilities, he continued, “wise and good men” must ask “whether the war in which they are going to engage be just, practicable and necessary.” War with the colonists would be unjust, he declared. The colonists' grievances were the outgrowth of the “oppressions you have accumulated on America.” Furthermore, North was taking Great Britain into a war that it might not be able to win. Indeed, Camden spoke of the “impracticability of conquering America.” The army, he said, could never “conquer a great continent of 1800 miles, containing three millions of people, all indissolubly united on the great Whig bottom of liberty and justice.” It was possible, though by no means certain, that a naval blockade could quash the American rebellion. Britain would go to war filled with “discontent and division,” whereas the Americans were “prepared to meet these severities [of war] and to surmount them” through “a union as renders her invincible.… They are allied in the common defence of every thing dear to them. They are struggling … in support of their liberties and properties, and the most sacred rights of mankind.”
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