The Loyalists of Massachusetts Part 11

At a town meeting held August 6, 1812, the following resolutions were pa.s.sed: "That the inhabitants of the town of Boston have learned with heartfelt concern that in the City of Baltimore a most outrageous attack, the result of deliberate combinations has been made upon the freedom of opinion and the liberty of the press. An infuriated mob has succeeded in accomplis.h.i.+ng 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."

"In the circ.u.mstances attending the origin, the progress, and the catastrophe of this b.l.o.o.d.y scene, we discern with painful emotion, not merely an aggravation of the calamities of the present unjust and ruinous war, but a prelude to the dissolution of all free government, and the establis.h.i.+ng of a reign of terror. 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 inst.i.tutions."[91]

[91] Boston Town Records, City Doc.u.ment No. 115, pp. 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322.

The foregoing is a fair example of the feelings shown in New England towards this unjustifiable war, and which culminated in the famous Hartford convention which was accused of designing an organized resistance to the general government, and a separation of the New England states from the Union if the war was not stopped. The resolutions condemning the Baltimore mob also show the change in public opinion that had taken place in Boston during the thirty-seven years that had elapsed since the commencement of the Revolution in Boston, which was inaugurated by mob violence, partic.i.p.ated in by many who, by the strange irony of fate, by these resolutions condemned their own actions.

Mr. Quincy did not stand alone among his countrymen of that day in a general champions.h.i.+p of Great Britain in the hour of her extremity. The Reverend John Sylvester, John Gardner, rector of Trinity church, Boston, a man of great scholars.h.i.+p, among others lifted up his voice in protest against unfair treatment of Great Britain by the government and people of the United States.

In a sermon at this time he said: "Though submissive and even servile to France, to Great Britain we are eager to display our hatred and hurl our defiance. Every petty dispute which may happen between an American captain and a British officer is magnified into a national insult. The land of our fathers, whence is derived the best blood of the nation, the country to which we are chiefly indebted for our laws and knowledge is stigmatized as a nest of pirates, plunderers and a.s.sa.s.sins. We entice away her seamen, the very sinews of her power.

"We refuse to restore them on application; we issue hostile proclamations; we interdict her s.h.i.+ps of war from the common rights to hospitality; we have non-importation acts; we lay embargoes; we refuse to ratify a treaty in which she has made great concessions to us; we dismiss her envoy of peace who came purposely to apologize for an act unauthorized by her government; we commit every act of hostility against her in proportion to our means and station. Observe the conduct of the two nations and our strange conduct. France robs us and we love her; Britain courts us and we hate her."

It was during the summer of 1812, when Jefferson truly stated that every continental power of importance, except Russia, was allied with Napoleon, and Great Britain stood alone to oppose them, for Russia could not aid her if she would--her commerce paralyzed, her factories closed, commerce and her people threatened with famine. It was at this moment of dire extremity that Madison chose to launch his war message. His action was eagerly supported by Jefferson, Clay and Calhoun, and the younger members of his party.

Jefferson wrote to Duane: "The acquisition of Canada this year (1812) as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and the final expulsion of England from the American continent. Perhaps they will burn New York or Boston. If they do, we must burn the city of London, not by expensive fleets of Congreve rockets, but by employing a hundred or two Jack-the-painters, whom nakedness, famine, desperation and hardened vice will abundantly furnish from among themselves."[92]

[92] "Jack-the-painter" was a miscreant employed by Silas Deane, one of the U. S. Commissioners to France and the colleague of Dr. Franklin, to burn the docks at Bristol. He partially succeeded and was hanged for the crime, a far less infamous one than that advocated by Jefferson, the champion of the rights of man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURNING OF NEWARK, CANADA, BY UNITED STATES TROOPS.

In retaliation for the destruction of the Public landing at Toronto and Newark, and other villages, the public building at Was.h.i.+ngton was burned.]

Three months after making this prediction, the surrender of the United States invading force to the British General Brock, or as Jefferson preferred to style it, "the detestable treason of Hull," "excited," he writes, "a deep anxiety in all b.r.e.a.s.t.s." A few months later we find him lamenting that "our war on the land was commenced most inauspiciously."

This has resulted, he thinks, from the employment of generals before it is known whether they will "stand fire" and has cost us thousands of good men and deplorable degradation of reputation.(*) "The treachery, cowardice, and imbecility of the men in command has sunk our spirits at home and our character abroad."[93]

[93] Jefferson's Works, Vol. VI., pp. 99, 193, 104.

At the commencement of the war of 1812, the whole number of British troops in Canada was 4450, supplemented by about four thousand Canadian militia. With this corporal guard it was necessary to protect a frontier of over 1600 miles in length. Any part of this line was liable to an invasion of United States troops whose lines of communication were far superior. Moreover Great Britain was unable to send reinforcements until after the fall of Napoleon in June, 1814, when the war was nearly fought out.

American writers have always severely criticised the British for burning the public buildings when they captured Was.h.i.+ngton. Ex-President Jefferson, who proposed that the criminal cla.s.ses of London should be hired to burn that city, stigmatized the burning of Was.h.i.+ngton as "vandalism," and declared it would "immortalize the infamy" of Great Britain. He who could contemplate with equanimity the fearful horrors that must have resulted from the putting in practice of his monstrous proposition to burn a city crowded with peaceful citizens, professed to be horrified at the destruction of a few public buildings by which no man, woman or child, was injured in person or property. With equal hypocrisy he professed to believe that no provocation for the act was given by the United States commanders. Upon this point he was taken to an account by an open letter from Dr. John Strachan, afterwards Bishop of Toronto. This letter should be preserved as long as there lives a British apologist for the acts of the United States in the War of 1812.

In part it was as follows:

"As you are not ignorant of the mode of carrying on the war adopted by your friends, you must have known it was a small retaliation after redress had been refused, for burnings and depredations not only of public but private property, committed by them in Canada." In July, 1812, General Hull invaded Upper Canada and threatened by proclamation to exterminate the inhabitants if they made any resistance. He plundered those with whom he had been in habits of intimacy for years before the war. Their linen and plate were found in his possession after his surrender to General Brock. He marked out the loyal subjects of the king as objects of peculiar resentment, and consigned their property to pillage and conflagration.

In April, 1813, the public buildings at York (now Toronto) the capital of Upper Canada, were burned by the troops of the United States contrary to the articles of capitulation. Much private property was plundered and several homes left in a state of ruin. Can you tell me, sir, the reason why the public buildings and library at Was.h.i.+ngton should be held more sacred than those at our York?

In June, 1813, Newark came into possession of your army, and its inhabitants were repeatedly promised protection to themselves and property by General Dearborne and General Boyd. In the midst of their professions the most respectable of them, almost all non-combatants, were made prisoners and sent into the United States. The two churches were burned to the ground; detachments were sent under the direction of British traitors to pillage the loyal inhabitants in the neighborhood and to carry them away captive. Many farm-houses were burned during the summer and at length, to fill up the measure of iniquity, the whole of the beautiful village of Newark was consigned to flames. The wretched inhabitants had scarcely time to save themselves, much less any of their property. More than four hundred women and children were exposed without shelter on the night of the tenth of December, to the extreme cold of a Canadian winter, and great numbers must have perished, had not the flight of your troops, after perpetrating their ferocious act, enabled the inhabitants of the country to come to their relief. General McClure says he acted in conformity with the order of his government.

In November, 1813, your friend General Wilkinson committed great depredations through the eastern district of Upper Canada. The third campaign exhibits equal enormities. General Brown laid waste the country between Chippewa and Fort Erie, burning mills and private houses. The pleasant village of St. David was burned by his army when about to retreat. On the 15th of May a detachment of the American army pillaged and laid waste as much of the adjacent country as they could reach. They burned the village of Dover with all the mills, stores, distillery, and dwelling houses in the vicinity, carrying away such property as was portable, and killing the cattle.

On the 16th of August, some American troops and Indians from Detroit surprised the settlement of Port Talbot, where they committed the most atrocious acts of violence, leaving upwards of 234 men, women and children in a state of nakedness and want.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURNING OF JAY IN EFFIGY.

For signing the Treaty of 1797 Jay was burned in effigy. Hamilton was stoned and the British Minister at Philadelphia insulted.]

On the 20th of December, a second excursion was made by the garrison of Detroit, spreading fire and pillage through the settlements of Upper Canada. Early in November, General McArthur, with a large body of mounted Kentuckians and Indians, made a rapid march through the western part of the London districts, burning all the mills, destroying provisions and living upon the inhabitants. Other atrocities committed by the American troops, among them the wanton destruction of a tribe of Indians, unarmed and helpless, are detailed by Dr. Strachan. He adds, addressing Jefferson: "This brief account of the conduct of your government and army will fill the world with astonishment at the forbearance of Great Britain."

After two years and a half had been expended in vain and puerile attacks on the "handful of soldiers" with which Great Britain was able to resist its invasion, combined with such a.s.sistance as the patriotic Canadians were able to afford, it was found that not only Canada could not be conquered, but that much of the territory of the United States had pa.s.sed into the hands of the enemy, with not one foot of that enemy's territory in their own hands to compensate for the loss.

When the arms of the United States had suffered many reverses and it became plain that they must accept the best terms from Great Britain that they could procure, John Adams declared that he "would continue the war forever rather than surrender one iota of the fisheries as established by the third article of the treaty of 1783." He boasted that he had saved the fishermen in that year, and now in 1814 he learned with dismay that they were again lost to his country, their relinquishment being one of the terms insisted on by the British commission as the price of peace.

The Federalists also were not easily satisfied. They admitted that peace was a happy escape for a country with a bankrupt treasury, and all resources dissipated. "But what," they asked, "have we gained by a war provoked and entered into by you with such a flourish of trumpets? Where are your 'sailors' rights?' Where is the indemnity for our impressed seamen? How about the paper blockade? The advantages you promised us we have not obtained. But we have lost nothing? Have we not? What about Grand Manan and Moose Island and the fisheries and our West Indian commerce?" So severely did Boston suffer that there were sixty vessels captured at the entrance to the harbor by one small fis.h.i.+ng smack of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, cruising in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay.

All who were concerned in the pa.s.sage of the treaty were the subjects of the popular wrath. Jay was declared to be an "arch traitor," a "Judas who had betrayed his country with a kiss," and was burned in effigy in a dozen cities. Hamilton was stoned; the name of Was.h.i.+ngton was hooted, and the British flag dragged in the mud.

Edmund Quincy, in the life of his father, says, "The fall of Bonaparte, although it occasioned as genuine joy to New England as to the mother country herself, did not bring with it absolutely unalloyed satisfaction." There was reason to apprehend that the English administration, triumphant over its gigantic foe, its army and navy released from the incessant service of so many years, might concentrate the whole of the empire upon the power which it regarded as a volunteer ally of its mighty enemy, and administer an exemplary chastis.e.m.e.nt. No doubt many Englishmen felt, with Sir Walter Scott, that "it was their business to give the Americans a fearful memento, that the babe unborn should have remembered," and there is as little question that infinite damage might have been done to our cities and seacoast and to the banks of our great rivers, had Great Britain employed her entire naval and military forces for that purpose. But happily the English people wisely refrained from an expenditure of blood and gold which could have no permanent good result, and which would only serve to exasperate pa.s.sions and to prolong animosities which it was far wiser to permit to die out.

It is not unlikely that the attention of English people had been so absorbed by the mighty conflict going on at their very doors that they had not much to spare for the distant and comparatively obscure fields across the Atlantic, and indeed the sentiments of the English people and the policy of English governments have never exhibited a spirit of revengefulness. The American war was but a slight episode in the great epic of the age. At any rate the English ministry were content to treat with the American commissioners at Ghent and to make a peace which left untouched the pretended occasion for the war, over in expressive silence, and peace was concluded, leaving "sailors' rights" the great watchword of the war party, substantially as they stood before hostilities began, except that our fishermen were deprived of the valuable privilege they enjoyed of catching and curing fish on the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.[94]

[94] Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 358.

The news of peace was received in Boston with great joy. It was a day given up to rejoicing; salutes were fired; the bells rang out their merriest peals; the volunteer companies with their bands filled the streets; the school boys took a holiday; the wharves so long deserted were thronged, and the melancholy s.h.i.+ps that rotted along side them were once more gay with flags and streamers. Thus rejoicing extended all along the seaboard and far inland, making glad all hearts and none more glad than those of the promoters of the war in high places and low.[95]

[95] Life of Josiah Quincy, pp. 360, 361.

And so the "war of 1812" ended amid a general joy, not for what it had accomplished, for the American forces were defeated in their invasion of Canada, and the United States did not acquire one foot of additional territory, or the settlement of any of the questions which were the pretext for the war.

Much that occurred during the war of 1812 has been conveniently forgotten by American historians, and much that had not occurred, remembered. By degrees failure was transformed into success. The new generations were taught that in that war their fathers had won a great victory over the whole power of Great Britain single handed and alone.

This amazing belief is still cherished among the people of the United States, to the astonishment of well informed visitors who meet with evidence of the fact.

CHAPTER X.

_THE CIVIL WAR AND THE PART TAKEN BY GREAT BRITAIN IN SAME._

For the first fifty years after the Revolution, the wealthy aristocratic slave-holding Southern states governed the Union and controlled its destiny. The acquisition of Florida and the Louisiana purchase doubled the area of the United States, and the territory derived from the Mexican War doubled it again. It was the intention of the South to extend slavery over this immense territory, but they were checked in the northern part of it by the enormous European immigration that poured into it and prevented it from becoming slave territory. Then came the "irrepressible conflict," the border war in Missouri and "bleeding Kansas," the battle of Ossawatomie and Harper's Ferry raid, and the constant pin-p.r.i.c.king of the abolition societies in the North, the headquarters of which were in Boston.

The presidential election of 1860 showed the South that they had lost control of the government and that the free states were increasing enormously in wealth and population, and that, following the example of Great Britain, it would be only a question of time before they would insist on abolis.h.i.+ng slavery. Then it was that the Southerners decided to do what their fathers had done eighty-five years before, secede and become Dis-unionists. They could not believe that there would be any opposition to their leaving, especially from Ma.s.sachusetts, that place that had always been foremost in disunion sentiments. Besides, had not the Abolitionists said repeatedly in Faneuil Hall, "The Cradle of Liberty," that if they would leave the Union they would "pave their way with gold" to get rid of them, and did not the New York Tribune, which had been the organ of the Abolitionists, and which now declared that "if the cotton states wished to withdraw from the Union they should be allowed to do so"; that "any attempt to compel them to remain by force would be contrary to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to the fundamental idea upon which human liberty is based," and that "if the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three million subjects in 1776, it was not seen why it would not justify the secession of five million of Southerners from the Union in 1861." This was quite consistent with the remark of a leading Abolitionist paper in Boston that "the Const.i.tution was a covenant with h.e.l.l." The South also contended that even if they were not justified in becoming Dis-unionists in 1776, they had established their right to independence by force of arms and that when they had entered into a confederation with the other seceding colonies, they had never a.s.signed any of their rights which they had fought for, that they were sovereign, independent states, and that the bond that bound them together was simply for self-protection and was what the name signified "United States," and not a nation. In proof of this they stated that when the convention met in Philadelphia in May, 1787, for the purpose of adopting a const.i.tution for a stronger form of government, the first resolution presented was, "Resolved, That it is the opinion of this committee that a national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme legislature, executive and judiciary." This was followed by twenty-three other resolutions as adopted and reported by the committee in which the word "national" occurred twenty-six times. Mr. Ellsworth, of Connecticut moved to strike out the word "national" and to insert the words "Government of the United States." This was agreed to unanimously, and the word "national" was stricken out wherever it occurred, and nowhere makes its appearance in the Const.i.tution finally adopted. The prompt rejection of this word "national" is obviously much more expressive of the intent of the authors of the Const.i.tution than its mere absence from the Const.i.tution would have been. It is a clear indication that they did not mean to give any countenance to the idea that the government which they organized was a consolidated nationality instead of a confederacy of sovereign members. The question of secession was first raised by men of Ma.s.sachusetts, the birthplace of secession. Colonel Timothy Pickering was one of the leading secessionists of his day. He had been an officer in the Revolution; afterwards Postmaster General, Secretary of War, Secretary of State in the cabinet of General Was.h.i.+ngton and senator from Ma.s.sachusetts.

Writing to a friend on December 24, 1803, he says: "I will not despair.

I will rather antic.i.p.ate a new confederacy exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence and oppression of the aristocratic Democrats of the South. There will be (and our children, at farthest, will see it) a separation. The white and black population will mark the boundary."[96]

In another letter, written in January 29, 1804, he said: "The principles of our Revolution point to the remedy--a separation. This can be accomplished and without spilling one drop of blood, I have little doubt. It must begin in Ma.s.sachusetts."[96]

[96] Life of Cabot, p. 491.

In 1811, on the bill for the admission of Louisiana as a state of the Union, the Hon. Josiah Quincy, a member of Congress from Ma.s.sachusetts, said: "If this bill pa.s.s, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of this Union; that it will free the states from other moral obligations, and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some definitely to prepare for a separation, amicably, if they can, violently if they must."

The war between the North and the South produced an abundant crop of bitter prejudices against the mother country. This sentiment was shared by the South as well as by the North. 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 a.s.serted the right of free men to think as they pleased, and to express those thoughts freely. But that in so doing they showed hostility to the United States it is false and foolish to a.s.sert. There was neither unfriendliness nor malice. This hostility to the South, so far as it existed, was based solely upon the existence of slavery there.

That which existed against the North was based solely upon the belief that a stronger power was taking advantage of its strength to trample upon the political rights of a weaker one. Any person living either North or South at that time cannot deny that they met many examples of both of these opinions among their respective acquaintances in both these sections.