Mary Howitt

“ But her colours were struck already, and the gallant and brave young man, delirious with suffering, cried continually for four days while life lasted, “Don’t give up the ship!” an expression which became consecrated to his countrymen. The Shannon carried her prize into Halifax, and there poor Lawrence died, and was buried, his pall being borne by the oldest captains in the British navy, who mourned for him with generous sympathy. War makes such men enemies, and their duty it is to kill each other! ”

“ We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. ”

“ The day before the battle of Bunker’s Hill, the Provincial congress at Philadelphia, having voted to raise an army of 20,000 men, proceeded to elect George Washington, then present as delegate from Virginia, to the rank of commander-in-chief. The northern colonies had resolved, in order to secure the adherence of the South, to choose a southern commander, and the superior wisdom of Providence guided them in the selection. God provides the man for the work, and Washington was the appointed agent of a great people’s emancipation. Divine wisdom, and not that of man, guided the choice. ”

“ By the time the companies reached Fort Laramie the epidemic had expended its violence, and in the pure air of the elevated region they were safe from further attack. But then the real hardships of their journey began. Up and down the mountains that arise in the Sweet Water Valley; over the spurs of the Wind River chain; through the Devil’s Gate, and past the stupendous mass of Rock Independence, they toiled slowly up to the South Pass, descended to the tributaries of the Colorado, and plunged into the rugged defiles of the Tampanozu Mountains. ”

“ It was time that summary measures were taken, for disaffection and sedition were spreading in all directions; armed mobs were marching everywhere, erecting liberty-poles and committing deeds of violence. Fifteen thousand men were sent into the disaffected districts, under General Lee of Virginia. No sooner was the news abroad that this formidable army was advancing against them, than the tide of democratic violence began to ebb; liberty-poles were pulled down, and the armed insurgents dispersed. ”

“ Nothing could be more natural than that the citizens of the United States, who had so lately and so gloriously achieved their own independence, should sympathise warmly in the struggle of that very nation which had aided them in the time of their difficulty to throw off the despotism under which they was suffering, and the early and better impulse to which had been a spark caught from the American flame of liberty. While the anti-federalists, resisting, as they believed, all dangerous aggressions on their own dearly-bought independence, cordially espoused the French cause ”

“ Is not the true benevolence and the true Christianity rather to gradually, wisely and justly abolish slavery—to prepare the black man to be a good and useful citizen of a great and free country, and more productive to his master as a servant than as a slave? ”

“ Nevertheless,” concluded he, “the union by a lasting and honourable peace is the ardent wish of every American. The British nation will then find us as affectionate and valuable friends as we now are determined and fatal enemies, and will derive from that friendship more solid and real advantage than the most sanguine can expect from conquest.”
On the 22nd of April, congress officially declared, that any man or body of men, who should presume to make any separate or partial agreement with the commission under the crown of Great Britain, should be considered as enemies of the United States ”

“ We have merely given above the slightest idea of the vast industrial operations of the United States, which embrace every branch of arts and manufactures; but that little is enough to show how great are their resources, and what an immense field is opened to their enterprise, to their skill and inventive genius. ”

“ In vain did Lord Chatham stand before the British senate as the eloquent advocate of America, declaring that the way must be immediately opened for reconciliation, or it would be soon too late. “His majesty,” argued he, “may indeed wear his crown, but the American jewel out of it, it will not be worth wearing. I say,” continued he, taking up the argument of American wrongs, “you have no right to tax the colonies without their consent. They say truly, representation and taxation must go together; they are inseparable. This wise people speak out. They do not hold the language of slaves ”

“ For some time everything went well for the Americans, when a heavy fog coming on, and the British availing themselves of the cover of a stone house, the fortune of the day turned. The darkness was such that friend could not be distinguished from foe; the Americans fell into confusion; the ammunition of some corps was expended, and others, seized with a panic, fled. That which had promised to be a victory was changed into defeat. The American loss was about 1,000, 400 of whom were taken prisoners; among the killed was General Nash, of North Carolina. The British lost about half that number. ”

“ There was no New England here to pour in her militia; no bold forces of New Hampshire and the young Vermont to come down 105like a mountain torrent; Pennsylvania was impelled by no general zeal either of patriotism or liberty; the greater part of the Quakers, a wealthy and influential body, were, if not strongly tinged by British loyalty, at all events neutral. The militia of Pennsylvania, even at this moment, when the enemy was advancing on the capital, amounted barely to 3,000. Washington’s force was greatly inferior to that of the enemy, not much exceeding 11,000 men. ”

“ The changes which knowledge and general enlightenment have produced in the Protestant world universally, and even in the Catholic when it has been forced into closer contact with progressive opinion, have not reached Mexico, which has been shut up as it were, and which has jealously retained all her native aversions, prejudices and jealousies. Besides which, Mexico as a colony belonged less to the Spanish nation than to the Spanish kings, and was governed by their viceroys, regardless of the well-being of the people, merely as an estate to produce a revenue. ”

“ In the meantime many a long depression and many a sally of impatience and petulance must be borne.
This was precisely the case with America. She had suffered from every calamity of war; her towns had been burned, her country ravaged, her frontiers laid waste by Indians; her citizens had been called out to serve in her army, and to suffer even more than the average miseries of camps, hunger, nakedness, and disease, with insufficient hospital resources. Citizen had been armed against citizen, and even brother against brother. ”

“ Washington and the federalists were pronounced to be hostile to the cause of France; to be traitors to their own principles, enemies to the rights of man, and meanly subservient to Great Britain.
Morris, the successor of Jefferson as American representative in France, a man of great sagacity and cool judgment, who having taken an active part in the revolution of his own country, could not yet regard with satisfaction the means adopted to establish a republic in France, was looked upon with suspicion by whatever party for the time being held the reins of government. ”

“ There is a touching pathos in the whole sad history, and a calm dignity in the behaviour of all parties, the offender and the offended, which elevate humanity and are deeply affecting to contemplate. Nor as regarded Arnold, the willing Judas of American liberty, was this noble Christian dignity compromised. Washington sent Mrs. Arnold to her husband at New York, who was himself obliged to confess his obligation to the commander-in-chief for the kindness and protection which she had received from him, as well as the many obligations she was under to the gentlemen of his family. ”

“ In vain did the merchants of London and other commercial towns petition in favour of America. Dr. Franklin and other colonial agents were refused a hearing before the house. America was condemned. The two houses of parliament, by a large majority, assured the king that “the Americans had long wished to become independent, and only waited for ability and opportunity to accomplish 56their design. To prevent this, therefore, and to crush the monster in its birth, was the duty of every Englishman; and this must be done, at any price and at every hazard.” Such was the temper of parliament. ”

“ All New England was now astir with the movement westward, and again we have chronicles of migration and early settlement, as in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. Quaint and beautiful are the details which exist of these movements. The plans were drawn in Boston, and at Providence in Rhode Island, of great cities to be erected on the banks of rivers flowing as yet through the wilderness; the intending emigrants met to draw lots for their future homes in these cities, each “town-lot to be ninety feet front and 180 feet in depth;” the centre street of the city to be 150 feet wide. ”

“ The valiant must, to win the approbation of God and their country, be sober, orderly, and merciful. His noble brethren in arms will not be deaf to this hasty appeal from their commander and friend.’
“On the 16th, he called the army to return public and private thanks to God for victory; and on the 19th, for the better preservation of order and suppression of crime, he proclaimed martial law. Thus protected by the American army, the citizens of Mexico were more secure from violence, and from the fear of robbery and murder, than they had ever been under their own flag.” ”

“ When parliament met in January of this year, the American war was the first and most important topic of discussion, and Burke and the Duke of Richmond, Lord North, and the whole of the Rockingham party, entered more or less into the advocacy of the colonies. As to the war itself, the loss of life it had occasioned, the enormous expenses which it had entailed, and the hopelessness of its results, formed a strong argument in the mouths of all reasonable men. Still the war-party was strong, and Burgoyne could neither obtain an audience from the king nor get a hearing in parliament. ”

“ The people were provoked to war, and the Americans learned to know Black Hawk. He and his warriors came mounted and armed into the country which they still claimed as their own, and broke up the settlements of the white intruders, killing whole families and destroying their dwellings. Generals Scott and Atkinson were sent out against them. But an enemy more formidable than the red man went with them, and thinned their ranks more remorselessly than the hatchet of the savage. This was the cholera. The troops embarked in steamboats at Buffalo, and the disease made its first appearance on board. ”

“ As far as the colonists themselves were concerned, we are assured by their earlier historians that the majority had no idea of or wish to separate themselves from England, and that the utmost which they contemplated by the conquest of Canada, was the freedom from French and Indian wars, and that state of tranquil prosperity which would leave them at liberty to cultivate and avail themselves of the productions and resources of an affluent land. ”

“ The possession of the vast extent of what was so lately Mexican territory, with its framework of society so different to that of the United States, had caused considerable anxiety in the minds of many thoughtful men as to the result. It was feared that many years must pass before a sufficient number of American citizens had settled in these new lands to fuse the old elements into a congruous mass, and that before this should take place bloodshed and disruption might have made the acquired territory a dear purchase. ”

“ The taking of Mexico was the crisis of the war. But though the enemy’s capital was in the hands of the Americans, they made use of their conquest for no other purpose than to establish peace. In vain Santa Anna endeavoured to carry on the war; his power was gone for the present, and in October, being abandoned by his troops, he once more became a fugitive. In the following February a treaty was laid before congress, and on the 29th of May, the treaty being signed between the two nations, peace was declared to the American army in Mexico. ”

“ He saw with pleasure that the effects of the war had almost disappeared; that agriculture was pursued with activity; that the harvests were abundant, manufactures increasing, the towns flourishing, and commerce becoming daily more extended and profitable. The condition of society, the progress of improvements, the success of industrial enterprise, all gave tokens of order, peace and contentment, and a most cheering promise for the future. ”

“ While the northern provinces had been so long harassed, and had suffered from the calamities of war, the southern had enjoyed such comparative tranquillity that they had duly cultivated their affluent lands and gathered in their abundant harvests, and had carried on their export trade with most of the European markets without impediment, except from British cruisers in the ocean. There had, it is true, been a continuance of petty hostilities between Georgia and East Florida, which had kept up a rumour of war in the south ”