The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (18 page)

Faced with continual assaults on its authority, the government turned in 1770 to that most foolhardy of all policies, selective and limited coercion. A small garrison was stationed in Boston to uphold a hard-pressed administration, and keep the peace in what was the most intractable town in America. The force deployed proved not enough to cow the Bostonians, but more than enough to stiffen their resolve and swell the numbers of the rest of the dissident colonists. The shooting of some civilians after a scuffle at the end of December, known as the ‘Boston Massacre’, gave the Americans their first martyrs and a propaganda coup. There was further violence in 1772 when a revenue cutter, the
Gaspée,
was set alight after it had been beached on Rhode Island. The Tea Act of 1773, contrived to assist the monopoly of the East India Company, was challenged by a party of Bostonians who, masquerading as Indians, came aboard a merchantman and tipped its cargo of tea into the harbour. Boston had clearly not been overawed, and fresh astringents were applied in the form of regulations devised to stifle its commerce.

This new stern line on America was taken by Frederick North who had become prime minister in 1770. Lord North’s strength lay in his skills as a parliamentary manipulator and dispenser of patronage rather than his vision or intellect. He remained in power until early 1782, relying on the steadfast support of a parliamentary mountain of Tory backbenchers who were happy to let ministers do their thinking for them. What bound North’s adherents together was common hostility towards anyone who rocked the boat, whether in Britain or America.

There existed within the inner recesses of the contemporary Tory mind a suspicion that a democratic spirit was infecting Britain and America. At home, it was fomented by John Wilkes who, having survived prosecution for criticising the government in 1763, had emerged as a focus for popular, extra-parliamentary opposition to the king and his ministers. The demonstrations which followed his election as an MP in 1768, and ham-fisted government attempts to unseat him, ran parallel to and mirrored the current unrest in America. Furthermore, and this thoroughly alarmed the Tories, both Wilkes and the colonists were willing to fight their political battles in concert with the mob. Disturbed by what seemed to be an upsurge in disloyalty and popular insolence, both at home and in North America, North’s supporters reacted by closing ranks and minds against any form of censure of the king and his ministers.

What might otherwise have appeared bone-headed reaction could be defended, up to a point, on the grounds that concessions to American opinion threatened the integrity of the empire. Firmness, always commendable in a father, would quickly silence the tumult that had been stirred up by a minority of Americans, who had been allowed to become intoxicated by libertarian ideas. Once the government’s resolution had been demonstrated, their countrymen would return to their senses and allegiance.

This simple diagnosis of complaint and remedy was rejected by a small group within parliament who pressed for a compromise. Chatham, Rockingham and, later, Edmund Burke, passionately believed that British and American subjects were morally and legally entitled to the same rights and freedoms. Moreover, the sixteenth-century precedent of returning MPs from Calais and Tournai was cited as evidence that Britain’s overseas possessions had the right to a voice in parliament. If this was withheld, and their judgement of the mood of the Americans correct, North’s opponents argued that his uncompromising line would create the rupture he was striving to avoid. The King, his ministers and the mass of backbenchers were unmoved and pointed out that the Americans, by the very recklessness of their actions, showed themselves strangers to reasoned compromise.

In the end, it was the Quebec Act of 1774 that impelled Americans to adopt a course of action which transformed civil protests into an armed rebellion. There was much anger against those provisions which closed the frontier and attached to Canada a great swathe of territory south and west of the Great Lakes which Americans had hitherto believed would be open to them for settlement. The official recognition of Catholicism in Canada provoked an outburst of Protestant hysteria. The lurid imagery of ancient sectarian nightmares was revived among a population which was overwhelmingly Protestant, and among whom memories of the persecutions and wars of the past century were evergreen. Early in 1775, the New England backwoods buzzed with rumours that Popery was about to be imposed and that the King was sending Anglican bishops to harass American Presbyterians.
12
In Massachusetts. a congregation heard the apocalyptic vision of their pastor, who predicted that ‘the Scarlet Whore would soon get mounted on Her Horned Beast in America, and, with the Cup of Abominations in her hand, ride triumphant over the heads of true Protestants, making multitudes Drunk with the Wine of Her Fornications.’
13

This was absurd, but by now many Americans were ready to believe any calumny against George III and his ministers. New England farmers, already fearful of the imminent arrival of Popery, were further agitated by tales that the government intended to reduce them to abject tenantry under English lords. Apprehensions of this kind, skilfully manipulated by the anti-government press and individual agitators, helped convince many waverers that American freedoms were in danger of being swept away by a ruthless king, whose government would stop at nothing in its efforts to assert its authority over the colonies. As paranoia gripped much of America, it was easy for propagandists to convince the credulous that they would soon find themselves enslaved. This American dread of slavery struck Samuel Johnson as ironic; ‘How is it’, he asked, ‘that we hear the loudest
yelps
for liberty among the drivers of slaves?’

The American political response to the Quebec Act and the measures taken against Boston was rapid, and followed a pattern which had proved efficacious during previous crises. A Continental Congress was convened at Philadelphia at the beginning of September 1774 to devise a programme of retaliatory measures which, it was hoped, would make the British government think again. The delegates proceeded cautiously for, while they were united in their rejection of parliamentary sovereignty, they did not want to precipitate a complete break with Britain. First, they repeated their legal position as subjects of a government which denied the existence of what they knew to be their inalienable rights. Then, they brandished the sword of American economic power with a call for a boycott of all trade with Britain and its other colonies. The Congressional apologist, Alexander Hamilton, claimed that this would soon ‘introduce beggary and wretchedness in an eminent degree both in England and Ireland; and as to the West-India plantations, they could not subsist without us.’
14

Representatives at the Congress were careful not to discuss military preparations publicly even though, while they debated, the British government banned the import of arms and gunpowder into North America. In what was a spontaneous reaction, many Congress supporters began to stockpile weapons and make arrangements for the swift mobilisation of militiamen in case the government used force to disarm them. The headstrong went further and seized colonial arsenals and forts; in December a body of men, in which the ‘Sons of Liberty’ were prominent, occupied Fort William and Mary at Portsmouth and carried off cannon, muskets and gunpowder.

5

The World Turned Upside Down: The American War of Independence, 1775–83

At the close of 1774 the British empire faced a crisis of unprecedented seriousness. During the past six months British power in North America had evaporated. Colonial governors had become stranded symbols of an authority they lacked the means to assert, and were reduced to writing dismal accounts of their impotence to Lord Dartmouth, the Colonial Secretary. Cadwallader Colden of New York was marginally luckier than his colleagues since the sloop HMS
Kingfisher
had cast anchor in the harbour in December, and he had a garrison of a hundred men from the Royal Irish Regiment. Nonetheless, he was anxious, since the ‘moderate inhabitants’ needed the reassurance of ‘a formidable power in the place to awe the licentious and encourage the friends of the government’.
1

Real power was passing into the hands of hard-line supporters of Congress. By April 1775, local committees of these men had superseded the governors of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina. There was nothing which the government could have done to halt this process, beyond issuing minatory proclamations which were largely ignored. What troops and warships were available were concentrated at Boston, the colonial militia could not be relied upon, and the customary instruments of coercion, the sheriffs and magistrates, either sided with Congress or were scared into neutrality. Even without partial or disinterested law officers, Americans in 1774 enjoyed considerable political freedom. Their press was unfettered so ideas could be freely expressed and circulated; Americans could travel where they wished, and hold public meetings whenever and wherever they chose. It was therefore easy for the agents of Congress to consolidate and organise the committed, convert the lukewarm, and bully the Loyalists.

It took time for the reality of the situation in America to be fully understood in London. Here, George III and his ministers vacillated between policies of concession and coercion. By the new year, the King was convinced that parliamentary sovereignty could only be restored in America by condign measures. North and Dartmouth concurred, but clung to the hope that the Americans would ultimately back down rather than risk war, and that a negotiated settlement could be arranged.

The policy which evolved during the early months of 1775 was therefore both placatory and threatening. On the one hand, North offered conciliation with promises of fiscal concessions in return for American acknowledgement of parliament’s supremacy, and on the other, he prepared for war. Four additional regiments of infantry were drafted to Boston, where the local commander, Lieutenant-General Thomas Gage, was ordered to take whatever measures he thought necessary to forestall armed resistance. A large-scale campaign was already being contemplated, and in February three major-generals, Sir William Howe, Sir Henry Clinton and John Burgoyne were appointed to command the armies which would undertake it. All were second choices since Jeffrey Amherst, who had extensive American experience and was a better general, had refused the supreme command because his sympathies lay with the colonists.

The prospect of a war with the Americans was greeted with dismay and disbelief inside Britain. Many agreed with the poet Cowper, who thought that Britain and America were ‘one country’, which made the imminent conflict a civil war.
2
Chatham vainly tried to avert catastrophe in January by laying a plan for compromise before the Lords, but the debate which followed did little more than expose the gulf between the two sides. Chatham praised the Americans as ‘men prizing and setting the just value on the inestimable blessing liberty’, a judgement which was contested by Dartmouth, who cynically dismissed the colonists’ appeals to conscience as a device to obscure their real motive, which was a selfish desire to be rid of restraints on their trade. Lord Gower, a dim Tory speaking ‘in a great heat’, condemned all Americans as traitors.

There was a strong feeling among military men that the Americans were bluffing and that, when put to the test of arms, they and their cause would quickly fall apart. In a report prepared for Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, early in March 1775, Major John Pitcairn was confident that ‘one active campaign, a smart action, and burning two or three of their towns, will set everything to rights.’
3
His commanding officer, Gage, was less sanguine and feared that precipitate action would provoke ‘irregular and incessant’ resistance, which might prove too much for the troops at his disposal.’
4

His misgivings were confirmed on 19 April when, acting on Dartmouth’s instructions, he sent a column of his best men to secure the arsenals at Worcester and Concord. Alerted by spies inside Boston, the Massachusetts militia mobilised. A small section was scattered after a brief exchange of fire at Lexington, but a larger body forced the British column to abandon Concord. As it retreated to Boston, it endured a sequence of guerrilla attacks in which it suffered 300 casualties, nearly three times as many as its adversaries. Within a few days, an American force, commanded by the impetuous and highly talented Benedict Arnold, occupied Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point, opening the way for an invasion of Canada.

The slide to war was now irreversible. News of the skirmishes in Massachusetts left the cabinet with no choice but to apply
force majeure
to all the colonies. This move was welcomed by George III, who had always been impatient with appeasement, and by those amateur and professional strategists who imagined that well-trained soldiers would easily disperse what was commonly seen as a rabble in arms.