The Wars Between England and America. Theodore Clarke Smith

under the Regulating Act proved impossible to put into operation, for the popular detestation was visited in such insulting and menacing forms that the new councillors and judges dared not serve. More radical action followed. When Gage, having caused the election of a legislature, prorogued it before it had assembled, the members none the less gathered. Declaring that the Regulating Act was invalid, they elected a council, appointed a committee of safety, and named a receiver of taxes. On February 1, 1775, a second Provincial Congress was chosen by the towns, which had not even a nominal sanction by the governor. The colony was, in fact, in peaceful revolution, for Gage found himself unable to collect {59} taxes or to make his authority respected as governor beyond the range of his bayonets. Equally significant was it that in several other colonies, where the governors failed to call the legislatures, provincial congresses or conventions were spontaneously elected to supervise the situation and choose delegates to the Continental Congress.

      So deep was the popular anger in Massachusetts Bay that the collection of arms and powder and the organization of militia were rapidly begun. Clearly, the Massachusetts leaders were preparing to persist to the verge of civil war. But by this time there began to be felt in the colonies a countercurrent of protest. As the situation grew darker, and men talked openly of possible separation unless the intolerable wrongs were redressed, all those whose interests or whose loyalty revolted at the idea of civil war became alarmed at the danger. Soon men of such minds began to print pamphlets, according to the fashion of the time, and to attempt to prevent the radicals from pushing the colonies into seditious courses. But the position of these conservatives was exceedingly difficult, for they were obliged to apologize for the home country at a time when every act on the part of that country indicated a complete indifference to colonial prejudices. Their arguments against {60} revolution or independence left, after all, no alternative except submission. Denounced as Tories by the hotter radicals, they found themselves at once more and more alarmed by the daring actions of the Whigs, and more detested by the excited people of their communities.

      The action of the British government after these events showed no comprehension of the critical situation into which they were rushing. George III and North secured in the election of 1774 a triumphant majority of the Commons, and felt themselves beyond reach of danger at home. The arguments of the colonists, the protests of the Continental Congress, fell upon indifferent ears. Although Burke and Chatham exerted themselves with astonishing eloquence in the session of Parliament which began in November 1774, the Whig motions for conciliation were voted down by the full Ministerial majority. Petitions from merchants, who felt the pressure of the Non-importation Association, were shelved. So far as the policy of the Ministry may be described, it consisted of legislation to increase the punishment of Massachusetts Bay and extend it to other colonies, and to offer a conditional exemption from Parliamentary taxation. Both houses of Parliament declared Massachusetts Bay to be in rebellion, and voted to {61} crush all resistance. An Act was passed on March 30, to restrain the trade of New England, shutting off all colonial vessels from the fisheries, and forbidding them to trade with any country but England or Ireland. By a second Act, in April, this restriction was extended to all the colonies except New York and Georgia. The only purpose of this Act was punitive. Every step was fought by the Whig opposition, now thoroughly committed to the cause of the colonists, but their arguments had the inherent weakness of offering only a surrender to the colonists' position which the parliamentary majority was in no mood to consider. In fact it was only with great difficulty and after a stormy scene that North induced his party to vote a so-called conciliatory proposition offering to abstain from taxing any colony which should make such a fixed provision for civil and judicial officers as would satisfy Parliament.

      It was only a few days after the passage of the restraining Acts by Parliament that the long-threatened civil war actually broke out in Massachusetts. General Gage, aware of the steady gathering of powder and war material by the revolutionary committee of safety, finally came to the conclusion that his position required him to break up these threatening bases of supplies. On April 19, 1775, he sent out a force of 800 men to {62} Lexington and Concord—towns a few miles from Boston—with orders to seize or destroy provisions and arms. They accomplished their purpose, after dispersing with musketry a squad of farmers at Lexington, but were hunted back to Boston by many times their number of excited "minute men," who from behind fences and at every crossroad harassed their retreat. A reinforcement of 1500 men enabled the raiding party to escape, but they lost over 800 men, and inflicted a total loss of only 90 in their flight.

      Thus began the American Revolution, for the news of this day of bloody skirmishing, as it spread, started into flame the excitement of the colonial Whigs. From the other New England colonies men sprang to arms, and companies marched to Boston, where they remained in rude blockade outside the town, unprovided with artillery or military organization, but unwilling to return to their homes. From the hill-towns, a band of men surprised Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, taking the cannon for use around Boston. In every other colony militia were organized, officers chosen and arms collected, and almost everywhere, except in Quaker Pennsylvania and in proprietary Maryland, the governors and royal officials fled to the seacoast to take refuge in royal ships of war, or resigned their positions at the command {63} of crowds of armed "minute men." Conventions and congresses, summoned by committees of safety, were elected by the Whigs and assumed control of the colonies, following the example of Massachusetts. The British colonial government, in short, crumbled to nothing in the spring of 1775. Only Gage's force of a few regiments, shut up in Boston, and a few naval vessels, represented the authority of England in America.

      Again there met a Continental Congress at Philadelphia, whose duty it was to unify colonial action and to give the colonial answer to the late parliamentary acts. Once more the ablest men of the colonies were present, now gravely perturbed over the situation, and divided into two camps. On the one hand, most of the New Englanders, led by Samuel Adams and John Adams, his cousin, felt that the time for parley was at an end, that nothing was to be hoped for from the North Ministry, and that the only reasonable step was to declare independence. Others still hoped that George III would realize the extent of the crisis and be moved to concessions, while yet others, who hoped little, thought that one more effort should be made to avoid revolution. But none dreamed of surrender. Of the growing number of Americans who recoiled in horror from {64} the possibility of independence, and were beginning to show their dread in every way, not one was in this body. It represented only the radicals in the several colonies.

      The Congress has been charged with inconsistency, for some of its measures were impelled by the most radical members, others by the conservatives. On the one hand, it declined to adopt a form of federation suggested by Franklin, and authorized Dickinson to draw up a final, respectful, almost obsequious petition to the King to avoid war—a document called the "Olive Branch"; but, on the other hand, it appointed Washington to command the troops near Boston as a Continental commander, adopted a report censuring the conciliatory proposition in bold language, and issued an address justifying with extravagant rhetoric the taking up of arms. Still more daring, it went so far as to arrange to pay the so-called "Continental army" by means of bills of credit, redeemable by the united colonies. Later, in 1775, it appointed a secret committee to correspond with friends abroad, and undertook extensive measures for raising troops and accumulating military stores. To the revolted colonies, who found themselves with no legal authorities, it gave the advice to form such governments as would secure peace and good order during the continuance {65} of the existing dispute, a step which was promptly taken by several.