War of American Revolution

“ When we consider the American Revolution, we are apt to think of it as a great war which all the inhabitants of the Colonies rose up against Great Britain, determined, no matter what might be the hardships and privations, no matter what the cost in blood and money, to achieve their independence and the right to govern themselves. ”

“ It would be ridiculous to compare the American war to the wars of the French revolution, or the efforts of the Americans to those of the French, who, when they were attacked by the whole of Europe, without credit and without allies, were still capable of opposing a twentieth part of their population to their foes, and of bearing the torch of revolution beyond their frontiers while they stifled its devouring flame within the bosom of their country. ”

“ Any civil convulsions would shake the fabric of government, and perhaps entirely subvert the present excellent Constitution; a strict adherence to which, it may be affirmed, is the best security of the rights and liberties of a country that has bled at every vein to purchase and transmit them to posterity. The sword now resheathed, the army dismissed, a wise, energetic government established and organized, it is to be hoped many generations will pass away in the lapse of time before America again becomes a theater of war. ”

“ We fear no nation, but let the time for shedding human blood be protracted, when consistent with our safety. If our claims upon the justice of England should be disregarded, there would be time enough for human butchery. He looked around him, and saw many who had witnessed the calamities and miseries of the American Revolution. But if war could not be avoided, accumulated horrors would not induce the American people to endanger their independence. They would say, like the immortal Washington, the former victorious leader of their armies, “I will conquer or die with my countrymen.” ”

“ But the seeds of separation were sown, and the ball of empire rolled westward with such astonishing rapidity that the pious mind is naturally excited to acknowledge a superintending Providence, that led to the period of independence, even before America was conscious of her maturity. Precipitated into a war dreadful even in contemplation, humanity recoiled at the idea of civil feuds and their concomitant evils. ”

“ When it was seen that the most distinguished and successful general that had engaged in the royal cause was obliged to surrender himself and his whole army prisoners of war, the generality even of those who had been the most earnest for the subjugation of America, began now to be convinced that it was totally impracticable. ”

“ The United States may congratulate themselves on the success of a revolution which has done honor to the human character by exhibiting a mildness of spirit amid the ferocity of war, that prevented the shocking scenes of cruelty, butchery, and slaughter, which have too often stained the actions of men, when their original intentions were the result of pure motives and justifiable resistance. They have been hailed by distant nations in terms of respect and applause for the glorious an successful stand made by them in favor of the liberties of mankind. ”

“ Never on the face of the earth has a war so terrible been waged on so little cause. The French Revolution—whose atrocities we have not yet emulated, thank God—was the frenzied outbreak of a nation trodden under foot and writhing in the grasp of tyranny such as no American ever dreamed of. ”

“ The situation of America was then such that no man of principle could balance on the line of conduct which duty impelled him to take. The natural and civil rights of man invaded, and all the social enjoyments interrupted, he did not think himself bound to sit a quiet spectator of the impending distractions and distresses of his country. He viewed the opposition to the oppressions of Great Britain in the light of necessary and defensive war. ”

“ The common opinion in the United States regarding the American Revolution is that it was a war waged against Great Britain in which the American people as a whole rose up against the mother country in order to protect themselves against unjustifiable and unbearable oppression. ”

“ They have seen the red flag of revolution wave where they had expected nothing but the banner of victory. They have seen whole populations, weary of the old order, throw it aside with an impatient gesture and bring a new order into being. They have good reasons to understand and fear the disturbing influences of war. They have felt them even in the United States—three thousand miles away from the European conflict. How much more pressing might this unrest be if the United States had fought all through the war, instead of coming in when it was practically at an end! ”

“ But after all these woes which England had inflicted upon America, her own statesmen, with almost undivided voice, declared that the interests of both nations were alike promoted, by having a few feeble colonies elevated into the rich and flourishing republic of the United States. Thus the war of the [Pg 355] American revolution must be pronounced to have been, on the part of England, which forced it, one of the most disastrous and senseless of those blunders which have ever accompanied the progress of our race. ”

“ Thus when hostilities commenced, and a war was denounced against the colonies, they had innumerable difficulties to surmount. Several of the most formidable powers of Europe had been invited by Britain to aid the cruel purposes of administration, either by the loan of auxiliaries, or by a refusal of supplies to the infant states, now struggling alone against a foe whose power, pride, and success had often made the nations tremble. On a retrospect of the critical situation of America, it is astonishing she did not fall at the threshold. ”

“ Those disturbances were for a time truly alarming and gave cause for serious apprehensions that civil convulsions might spread through the country within the short term of three or four years after independence had been established, and peace restored to the United States of America. Under existing circumstances, the high-handed and threatening proceedings of the insurgents wore a very formidable aspect. There were among them very many men hardy, bold, and veteran, who had been very serviceable in the field during the late Revolutionary War. ”

“ CHAPTER XVI AMERICAN NEUTRALITY LOST IN WAR The United States, as a maritime nation, could scarcely expect to escape the maelstrom of war induced by the task of suppressing the French Revolution and Napoleon, a task which occupied the legitimists of Europe for a quarter of a century, and involved every civilised nation of the Old World. ”

“ But though the most brilliant talents were displayed and the firmest opposition made by many of the best orators, and most enlightened and disinterested patriots of the nation, against the continuance of a ruinous war that produced nothing but defeat and disgrace, yet we have seen that only a short time elapsed before the King and his ministry were again ready to prosecute their hostile intentions and to continue desolation and carnage among the inhabitants of the United States. ”

“ But from the accumulated blessings which are showered down on the United States, there is reason to indulge a benign hope that America may long stand a favored nation and be preserved from the horrors of war, instigated either by foreign combinations or domestic intrigue, which are equally to be deprecated. ”

“ That war was at least fifteen years in the past when the two-horned beast was introduced into the field of this vision; and 2. The war of the Revolution was not a war of conquest. It was not waged to overthrow any other kingdom, and build this government on its ruins, but only to defend the just rights of the American people. An act of resistance against continual attempts of injustice and tyranny, cannot certainly be placed in the same catalogue with wars of aggression and conquest. ”

“ They who read of the war of the American revolution, and view its campaigns and battles as they would regard the conflicts of older and more advanced nations, can form no just notion of the disadvantages with which our people had to contend, or the great superiority of the enemy in all the usual elements of military force. ”

“ To future generations the period in American history, of most absorbing interest and profound inquiry, will be that embracing the incipiency, progress, and termination of the revolution which had its most pronounced phase in the memorable war of 1861. Historians rarely concur in their estimates of the limits of a revolution, and usually we find quite as much divergence in their views of the scope of its operations, as in their speculations as to its origin and causes, and their statements of its incidents and results. ”

“ In the beginning of the year 1777, the spirits of the Americans were generally re- animated by fresh hopes, in consequence of the measures taken by Congress to establish a permanent army until the conclusion of the war, and still more by their sanguine expectations of success from the negotiations and prospects of an alliance with France. ”

“ It finished by declaring that if America still preferred her connection with the insidious and hereditary enemy of Britain, she must expect the operations of war would be continued in such modes as tended most to distress, depopulate, and ruin. [See the manifesto at large in the British Remembrancer and in the Annual Register, as well as in the Journals of Congress.]
Mankind are seldom driven into compliance by the haughty threats of powerful adversaries, unless they feel their own weakness to such a degree as to render them abject. ”

“ Long ago the American people used these tactics to the advantage of its revolution. When America waged its great war of liberation against the English oppressors, it likewise entered into negotiations with other oppressors, with the French and the Spaniards who at that time owned a considerable portion of what is now the United States. In its desperate struggle for freedom the American people made "agree- ments" with one group of oppressors against the other for the purpose of weakening all oppressors and strengthening those who were struggling against tyranny. ”

“ After the pacification of the nations at war, and the conclusion of peace between Great Britain and America, such feuds arose in England from various sources and causes of discontent, as discovered that the nation for a time far from being more tranquilized than a United States, previous to their adoption of the present Constitution. ”

“ By the Declaration of Independence, dreaded by the foes an for a time doubtfully viewed by many of the friends of America, everything stood on a new and more respectable footing, both with regard to the operations of war or negotiations with foreign powers. ”

“ Whenever and wherever they have since moved, either by peaceful agitation or by physical force, to meliorate systems of government, whether in France at the close of the last century, or afterward on the second subversion of the elder branch of the Bourbons, or in the recent overthrow of the constitutional king, or in Ireland, or in England, or in Italy, or in Greece, or in South America, whether they succeeded or failed, there, in the tumult or in the strife, was the spirit of the American Revolution. ”

“ The manifest reluctance of some to oppose the power of Britain, the dread that others felt of so potent an adversary, the ill success of the American arms in Georgia, the surprise of the cavalry and other parties that were coming to their relief, the arrival of British reinforcements, and the rapid advance they made to conquest, appalled the inhabitants, and obliged the citizens soon to abandon all hopes of even saving their town. ”

“ But the attachment of many to their old allies, to whom they felt themselves obliged, of many others to the British nation, its modes of government and its commerce, occasioned such a stigma to mark them for a tie.
America should indeed forever have maintained a character of her own, that should have set her on high ground, whence she might have looked on from the pinnacle of independence and peace, and only have pitied the squabbles, the confusion, and the miseries of the European world. ”

“ But for the substantial aid thus rendered by the fleet and the army of France it can hardly be doubted that the American Revolution would have been crushed, Washington and Franklin would have been hanged as traitors, and monarchical historians would elegantly have described the horrors of the great American rebellion. ”

“ After repeated captures of the best appointed armies, composed both of domestic and foreign troops, despair of subjugating the United States had lowered down the spirit of the nation, and of the King of England so far as to become willing to treat on terms for the restoration of amity, and to speak with some degree of temper of the total separation and independence of America. ”

“ But by a stroke of generalship, little expected where no remarkable superiority in military knowledge had yet been discovered, affairs took a most unfavorable turn for the Americans, and reduced the little, resolute continental army to dangers and distresses, to exertions and vigor, scarcely to be paralleled in history. ”

“ We know not but the next will bring us an account of a general engagement begun, and when once begun, we know not how it will end, for the battle is not always to the strong. The events of war are uncertain. All that we can do is to pray, as I do most devoutly, that we may be victorious; at least, that we may not be vanquished. But if it should be the will of Heaven that our army should be defeated, our artillery lost, our best generals killed, and Philadelphia fall into Mr. Howe's hands, still America is not conquered. ”