James Henry Stark

“ No nation in the history of the world carried on a war so stubborn, so desperate, so costly, so vital. Had Great Britain failed, what would now be the position of the world? At the very time when Britain's need was the sorest, when every ship, every soldier and sailor that she could find was needed to break down the power of the man who had subjugated all Europe except Russia and Great Britain, the United States, the land of boasted liberty, did her best to cripple the liberating armies by proclaiming war against Britain in the hour of her sorest need. ”

“ And after praising the wise administration of His Majesty, and lauding the British constitution to the skies, he went on to say: "Those jealousies which some weak and wicked minds endeavored to infuse with regard to these colonies, had their birth in the blackness of darkness, and it is a great pity that they had not remained there forever. The true interests of Great Britain and her plantation are mutual, and what God in his providence has united, let no man dare attempt to pull asunder." ”

“ Mobs, by reducing men to a state of nature, defeat the object of every social compact. The sober citizen who trembles in beholding the fury of the mob, seeks refuge from its dangers by joining in its acclamations. The laws are silenced. New objects of violence are discovered. The government of the nation and the mob government change places with each other. The mob erects its horrid crest over the ruins of liberty, of property, of the domestic relations of life and of civil institutions. ”

“ Those who knew the General well in his later days, recall with affectionate recollection the noble presence and generous character of the chivalrous old soldier, a relic of the days in which giants were in stature and in heart, true to his king and country, a humble Christian and an honest and brave man, who united to the heroism of a Paladin the endurance of the pioneer, and when he could no longer serve his Prince in the field, served him still better by creating a new realm of civilization and progress in the heart of primeval forest. ”

“ I do not address myself to whigs or tories, but to the whole people. I know you well, you are loyal at heart, friends to good order, and do violence to yourselves in harboring one moment, disrespectful sentiments towards Great Britain, the land of our forefathers' nativity, and sacred repository of their bones, but you have been most insidiously induced to believe that Britain is rapacious, cruel and vindictive, and envies us the inheritance purchased by the sweat and blood of our ancestors. ”

“ The pest of partyism invades all the large cities of the country. New York is made the plunder of the thieves of one party and Philadelphia of thieves of the other. It is surely impossible that any nation should endure such a system forever. A nation which deliberately gives itself up to government by faction, under the name of party, signs its own doom. ”

“ What the consequences will be to have a numerous, hardy, independent people, possessed of a strong country, communicating little, or not at all, with England, I leave to your own reflections. By eagerly grasping at extensive territory we may run the risk, and that, perhaps, in no distant period, of losing what we now possess. The possession of Canada, far from being necessary to our safety, may in its consequences be even dangerous. A neighbor that keeps us in some awe is not always the worst of neighbors; there is a balance of power in America as well as in Europe. ”

“ The cause of King of Scarborough versus a mob that broke into his house and rifled his papers and terrified him, his wife, children and servants, in the night. The terror and distress, the distraction and horror of this family, cannot be described in words, or painted upon canvas. It is enough to move a statue, to melt a heart of stone, to read the story. A mind susceptible of the feelings of humanity, a heart which can be touched with sensibility for human misery and wretchedness, must relent, must burn with resentment and indignation at such outrageous injuries. ”

“ I hope the eyes of the people will be opened, that they will see how easy it is for some designing, wicked man to spread false reports to raise suspicion and jealousies in the minds of the populace, and enrage them against the innocent, but if guilty, this is not the way to proceed. The laws of our country are open to punish those who have offended. This destroying all peace and comfort and order of the community—all will feel its effects; and all will see how easily the people may be deluded, inflamed and carried away with madness against an innocent man. ”

“ Party rage, like jealousy and superstition is cruel as the grave;—that moderation is a crime and in times of civil confusions, many good, virtuous and peaceable persons now suffering banishment from America are the wretched proofs and instances. By letter from Salem from our friend Pynchon, all our friends there are well and longing, but almost without hope, for the good old times as is the common saying now except among those as he expresses it, whose enormous heaps have made them easy and insolent, and to wish for a continuance of those confusions by which they grow rich. ”

“ A democracy or republic it has been called, but it does not deserve the name of either. It was, however, a despotism cruelly carried into execution by mobs, and riots, and more incompatible with the rights of mankind than the enormous monarchies of the East. The government under the British Constitution consisting of kings, lords, and commons, is allowed both by Englishmen and foreigners to be the most perfect system that the wisdom of ages has produced. The distributions of power are so just, and the proportions so exact, as at once to support and control each other. ”

“ When war against Great Britain was proposed at the last session, there were thousands in these United States, and I confess to you I was myself among the number, who believed not one word of the matter, I put my trust in the old-fashioned notions of common sense and common prudence. That a people which had been more than twenty years at peace should enter upon hostilities against a people which had been twenty years at war, the idea seemed so absurd that I never once entertained it as possible. It is easy enough to make an excuse for any purpose. ”

“ At first he affiliated with the Loyalists, but soon deserted to the Disunionists, which gave him greater opportunities of realizing his ambitious dream. As a Loyalist the world would never have heard of him, but as John Marshall informs us, he ranks next to Washington as having rendered more conspicuous service to the United States than any other man in the Revolution. A great orator, a talented lawyer, a good soldier, master of every field he entered, punctilious and haughty of temperament, he scorned to bend even to the proud spirit of Washington. ”

“ Sensible that I am innocent, that all the charges against me are false, I can't help feeling: and although I am not obliged to give an answer to all the questions that may be put to me by every lawless person, yet I call God to witness—and I would not, for a thousand worlds, call my Maker to witness to a falsehood—I say I call my Maker to witness, that I never, in New England or Old, in Great Britain, or America, neither directly or indirectly, was aiding, assisting or supporting—in the least promoting or encouraging—what is commonly called the Stamp Act ”

“ Had slavery triumphed, that mob would at this day be the object and the subject of popular glorification; every man who belonged to it, who was present abetting and encouraging it, would claim his share of the glory, and a roll of honor would have been handed down for a centennial celebration in which every slaveholder in the land would have borne a part. But now that slavery is dead, and the statue of Garrison has its place in the [49] fashionable avenue of Boston, there is no longer any merit in the endeavor to buttress the fallen cause. ”

“ It is too true that ever since the origin of our controversy with Great Britain, the press of this town have been indulged in publishing what they pleased, while little has been published on the part of the government. The effect this must have had upon the minds of the people in general is obvious. In short, the changes have been so often rung upon oppression, tyranny, and slavery, that, whether sleeping or waking, they are continually vibrating in our ears, and it is now high time to ask ourselves whether we have not been deluded by sound only. ”

“ A Marbleheader ploughed only the deep for his living, his pasture lay afar off on the Banks of Newfoundland, or the Georges, and his harvest whitened the shores with their wide spread fish flakes. Even at this day, with its cluster of antique dwellings and rough trapesian streets, this seaport has an odd look, like some ancient town in England. But in this secluded spot, where stands the dilapidated fortresses of Sewall and Lee, several eminent men, merchants, mariners and lawyers, were born and educated, who became staunch loyalists. ”

“ In republics, popularity is the form of power most apt to corrupt its possessor and to tempt him, for party or personal interests, to trample on right to set principle at defiance. History has no higher or more imperative duty to perform than, by an unyielding fidelity, to impress this class of men with the apprehension that although through fear or favor they may escape animadversion of contemporaries, there awaits them in her impartial record, the retribution of truth. ”

“ It has been the policy of American historians and their echoes in England to bring disrepute upon the Indians and the British government who employed them, and not only to magnify actual occurrences, but sometimes, when facts were wanting, to draw upon imagination for such deeds of ferocity and bloodshed as might serve to keep alive the strongest feelings of indignation against the mother country, and thus influence men to take the field for revenge who had not already been driven thither by the impulse of their sense of patriotism. ”

“ Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion that has deluged your island in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world, and we think the legislature of Great Britain is not authorized to establish a religion fraught with such sanguinary and infamous tenets. ”

“ Today their descendants are organized as the United Empire Loyalists, and count it an honor that their ancestors suffered persecution and exile rather than yield the principle and idea of union with Great Britain.
The cause of the Loyalists failed, but their stand was a natural one and was just and noble. They were the prosperous and contended men—the men without a grievance. Conservatism was the only policy that one could expect of them. Men do not rebel to rid themselves of prosperity. Prosperous men seek to conceive prosperity. ”

“ It is not possible to give a more glowing eulogy in the English language of a person, than this written by John Adams, the successor of Washington as second President of the United States, but it could scarcely be less. The regularity of his life, his sympathy for the distressed, his affability, his integrity, his industry, his talents for business, and the administration of affairs, his fluency, and grace, as public speaker. His command of temper, and courteousness under provocation, united to form a rare man, and to give him influence. ”

“ It has almost become as commonplace that the great nation which in our own day has shown such an admirable combination of courage, devotion and humanity in its gigantic Civil War, and which since that time has so signally falsified the prediction of its enemies and put to shame all the nations of Europe by its unparalleled efforts in paying off its national debt, is of far lower moral type than its ancestors at the time of the War of Independence. This belief appears to me essentially false. The nobility and beauty of Washington can, indeed, hardly be paralleled. ”

“ We already feel the effects of anarchy, mutual confidence, affection, and tranquility, those sweeteners of human life are succeeded by distrust, hatred, and wild uproar; the useful arts of agriculture and commerce are neglected for caballing, mobbing this or the other man, because he acts, speaks or is suspected of thinking different from the prevailing sentiment of the times, in purchasing arms, and forming a militia. O height of madness! Can you indulge the thought one moment that Great Britain will consent to this? ”

“ An infuriated mob has succeeded in accomplishing its sanguinary purpose by the destruction of printing presses and other property, by violating the sanctuary of dwelling houses, breaking open the public prison and dragging forth from the protection of civil authority the victims of their ferocious pursuit, guilty of no crime but the expression of their opinions and completing the tissue of their enormities by curses, wounds and murders, accompanied by the most barbarous and shocking indignities. ”

“ It now suited colonists to describe themselves as apostles of liberty and to denounce England as an oppressor. It was a simple truth that England governed her colonies more liberally than any other country in the world. They were the only existing colonies which enjoyed real political liberty. Their commercial system was more liberal than that of any other colony. They had attained under British rule to a degree of prosperity which was surpassed in no quarter of the globe. England had loaded herself with debt in order to remove one great danger to their future ”

“ The press when opened to all parties and influenced by none, is a salutary engine in a free state, to preserve the freedom of that state, but when a party has gained the ascendancy, so far as to become the licensers of the press, either by act of government, or by playing off the resentment of the populace against printers, and authors, the press itself becomes an engine of oppression or licentiousness, and is as pernicious to society as otherwise it would be beneficial. ”

“ Each imagined it had been unfairly treated by the British Government.
Americans continually point to the period of the Civil war and triumphantly declare that Englishmen were unfriendly to the United States at that time. So they were. And Englishmen were unfriendly to the Confederate states during that time. In fact, Englishmen did exactly what Americans did at that time—some took the side of the North and others took the side of the South. This it was their privilege to do. They simply asserted the right of free men to think as they pleased, and to express those thoughts freely. ”

“ It was a doubt which the revolution did not silence, for the disturbing elements which had their issue in the Shay Rebellion, The Whiskey Insurrection and the mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line, in 1781, were embers of a fire, smothered, not quenched, which rendered state government insecure till it was welded into the Federal Union. There was a widespread dislike to the levelling principles of New England, [70] to the arrogant, restless and ambitious policy of its demagogues; to their manifest desire to invent or discover grievances, foment quarrels and keep the wound open and festering. ”