The American Revolution

As the British retreated, General Gates steadily closed in upon them with his overwhelming forces, which now numbered 20,000. Gates – to give him due credit – knew how to be active after the victory, although, when fighting was going on, he was a general of sedentary habits. When Arnold rushed down, at the critical moment, to complete the victory of Saratoga, Gates sent out Major Armstrong to stop him. “Call back that fellow,” said Gates, “or he will be doing something rash!” But the eager Arnold had out-galloped the messenger, and came back only when his leg was broken and the victory won. In the mean time Gates sat at his headquarters, forgetful of the battle that was raging below, while he argued the merits of the American Revolution with a wounded British officer, Sir Francis Clerke, who had been brought in and laid upon the commander’s bed to die. Losing his temper in the discussion, Gates called his adjutant, Wilkinson, out of the room, and asked him, “Did you ever hear so impudent a son of a b – h?” And this seems to have been all that the commanding general contributed to the crowning victory of Saratoga.

The British army is surrounded

When Burgoyne reached the place where he had crossed the Hudson, he found a force of 3,000 Americans, with several batteries of cannon occupying the hills on the other side, so that it was now impossible to cross. A council of war decided to abandon all the artillery and baggage, push through the woods by night, and effect a crossing higher up, by Fort Edward, where the great river begins to be fordable. But no sooner had this plan been made than word was brought that the Americans were guarding all the fords, and had also planted detachments in a strong position to the northward, between Fort Edward and Fort George. The British army, in short, was surrounded. A brisk cannonade was opened upon it from the east and south, while Morgan’s sharpshooters kept up a galling fire in the rear. Some of the women and wounded men were sent for safety to a large house in the neighbourhood, where they took refuge in the cellar; and there the Baroness Riedesel tells us how she passed six dismal nights and days, crouching in a corner near the doorway, with her three little children clinging about her, while every now and then, with hideous crashing, a heavy cannon-ball passed through the room overhead. The cellar became crowded with crippled and dying men. But little food could be obtained, and the suffering from thirst was dreadful. It was only a few steps to the river, but every man who ventured out with a bucket was shot dead by Virginia rifles that never missed their aim. At last the brave wife of a British soldier volunteered to go; and thus the water was brought again and again, for the Americans would not fire at a woman.

Clinton comes up the Hudson, but it is too late

And now, while Burgoyne’s last ray of hope was dying, and while the veteran Phillips declared himself heartbroken at the misery which he could not relieve, where was Sir Henry Clinton? He had not thought it prudent to leave New York until after the arrival of 3,000 soldiers whom he expected from England. These men arrived on the 29th of September, but six days more elapsed before Sir Henry had taken them up the river and landed them near Putnam’s headquarters at Peekskill. In a campaign of three days he outwitted that general, carried two of the forts after obstinate resistance, and compelled the Americans to abandon the others; and thus laid open the river so that British ships might go up to Albany. On the 8th of October, Sir Henry wrote to Burgoyne from Fort Montgomery: “Nous y voici, and nothing between us and Gates. I sincerely hope this little success of ours will facilitate your operations.” This dispatch was written on a scrap of very thin paper, and encased in an oval silver bullet, which opened with a tiny screw in the middle. Sir Henry then sent General Vaughan, with several frigates and the greater part of his force, to make all haste for Albany. As they passed up the river, the next day, they could not resist the temptation to land and set fire to the pretty village of Kingston, then the seat of the state legislature. George Clinton, governor of the state, just retreating from his able defence of the captured forts, hastened to protect the village, but came up only in time to see it in flames from one end to the other. Just then Sir Henry’s messenger, as he skulked by the roadside, was caught and taken to the governor. He had been seen swallowing something, so they gave him an emetic, and obtained the silver bullet. The dispatch was read; the bearer was hanged to an apple-tree; and Burgoyne, weary with waiting for the news that never came, at last sent a flag of truce to General Gates, inquiring what terms of surrender would be accepted.

Burgoyne surrenders, Oct. 17

Gates first demanded an unconditional surrender, but on Burgoyne’s indignant refusal he consented to make terms, and the more readily, no doubt, since he knew what had just happened in the Highlands, though his adversary did not. After three days of discussion the terms of surrender were agreed upon. Just as Burgoyne was about to sign the articles, a Tory made his way into camp with hearsay news that part of Clinton’s army was approaching Albany. The subject was then anxiously reconsidered by the British officers, and an interesting discussion ensued as to whether they had so far pledged their faith to the surrender that they could not in honour draw back. The majority of the council decided that their faith was irrevocably pledged, and Burgoyne yielded to this opinion, though he did not share it, for he did not feel quite clear that the rumoured advance of Clinton could now avail to save him in any case. In this he was undoubtedly right. The American army, with its daily accretions of militia, had now grown to more than 20,000, and armed yeomanry were still pouring in by the hundred. A diversion threatened by less than 3,000 men, who were still more than fifty miles distant, could hardly have averted the doom of the British army. The only effect which it did produce was, perhaps, to work upon the timid Gates, and induce him to offer easy terms in order to hasten the surrender. On the 17th of October, accordingly, the articles were signed, exchanged, and put in execution. It was agreed that the British army should march out of camp with the honours of war, and pile their arms at an appointed place; they should then march through Massachusetts to Boston, from which port they might sail for Europe, it being understood that none of them should serve again in America during the war; all the officers might retain their small arms, and no one’s private luggage should be searched or molested. At Burgoyne’s earnest solicitation the American general consented that these proceedings should be styled a “convention,” instead of a surrender, in imitation of the famous Convention of Kloster-Seven, by which the Duke of Cumberland, twenty years before, had sought to save his feelings while losing his army, beleaguered by the French in Hanover. The soothing phrase has been well remembered by British historians, who to this day continue to speak of Burgoyne’s surrender as the “Convention of Saratoga.”

In carrying out the terms of the convention, both Gates and his soldiers showed praiseworthy delicacy. As the British marched off to a meadow by the river side and laid down their arms, the Americans remained within their lines, refusing to add to the humiliation of a gallant enemy by standing and looking on. As the disarmed soldiers then passed by the American lines, says Lieutenant Anbury, one of the captured officers, “I did not observe the least disrespect or even a taunting look, but all was mute astonishment and pity.” Burgoyne stepped up and handed his sword to Gates, simply saying, “The fortune of war, General Gates, has made me your prisoner.” The American general instantly returned the sword, replying, “I shall always be ready to testify that it has not been through any fault of your excellency.” When Baron Riedesel had been presented to Gates and the other generals, he sent for his wife and children. Set free at last from the dreadful cellar, the baroness came with some trepidation into the enemy’s camp; but the only look she saw upon any face was one of sympathy. “As I approached the tents,” she says, “a noble-looking gentleman came toward me, and took the children out of the wagon; embraced and kissed them; and then, with tears in his eyes, helped me also to alight… Presently he said, ‘It may be embarrassing to you to dine with so many gentlemen. If you will come with your children to my tent, I will give you a frugal meal, but one that will at least be seasoned with good wishes.’ ‘Oh, sir,’ I cried, ‘you must surely be a husband and a father, since you show me so much kindness!’ I then learned that it was General Schuyler.”

Schuyler’s magnanimity

Schuyler had indeed come, with unruffled soul, to look on while the fruit which he had sown, with the gallant aid of Stark and Herkimer, Arnold and Morgan, was plucked by an unworthy rival. He now met Burgoyne, who was naturally pained and embarrassed at the recollection of the beautiful house which his men had burned a few days before. In a speech in the House of Commons, some months later, Burgoyne told how Schuyler received him. “I expressed to General Schuyler,” says Burgoyne, “my regret at the event which had happened, and the reasons which had occasioned it. He desired me to think no more of it, saying that the occasion justified it, according to the rules of war… He did more: he sent an aide-de-camp to conduct me to Albany, in order, as he expressed it, to procure me better quarters than a stranger might be able to find. This gentleman conducted me to a very elegant house, and, to my great surprise, presented me to Mrs. Schuyler and her family; and in this general’s house I remained during my whole stay at Albany, with a table of more than twenty covers for me and my friends, and every other possible demonstration of hospitality.” Madame Riedesel was also invited to stay with the Schuylers; and when first she arrived in the house, one of her little girls exclaimed, “Oh, mamma! Is this the palace that papa was to have when he came to America?” As the Schuylers understood German, the baroness coloured, but all laughed pleasantly, and put her at ease.

Bad faith of Congress

With the generosity and delicacy shown alike by generals and soldiers, it is painful, though instructive, to contrast the coarseness and bad faith with which Congress proceeded to treat the captured army. The presence of the troops in and about Boston was felt to be a hardship, and General Heath, who commanded there, wrote to Washington, saying that if they were to stay till cold weather he hardly knew how to find shelter and fuel for them. Washington replied that they would not be likely to stay long, since it was clearly for Howe’s interest to send them back to England as soon as possible, in order that they might replace other soldiers who would be sent over to America for the spring campaign. Congress caught up this suggestion with avidity, and put it to uses quite remote from Washington’s meaning. When Sir William Howe proposed Newport as a point from which the soldiers might more speedily be shipped, Washington, for sound and obvious reasons, urged that there should be no departure from the strict letter of the convention. Congress forthwith not only acted upon this suggestion so far as to refuse Sir William Howe’s request, but it went on gratuitously and absurdly to charge the British general with bad faith. It was hinted that he secretly intended to bring the troops to New York for immediate service, in defiance of the convention, and Congress proceeded to make this imputed treachery the ground for really false dealing on its own part. When Lord Howe’s transports reached Boston, it was not only ordered that no troops should be allowed to embark until all the accounts for their subsistence should have been settled, but it was also required that these accounts should be liquidated in gold. In the instructions given to General Washington a year before, a refusal on the part of anybody to receive the Continental paper money was to be treated as a high misdemeanour. Now Congress refused to take its own money, which had depreciated till it was worth barely thirty cents on a dollar. The captured army was supplied with provisions and fuel that were paid for by General Heath with Continental paper, and now Congress insisted that General Burgoyne should make his repayment dollar for dollar in British gold, worth three times as much.

In fairness to the delegates, we may admit that in all probability they did not realize the baseness of this conduct. They were no doubt misled by one of those wonderful bits of financial sophistry by which the enacting mind of our countrymen has so often been hopelessly confused. In an amusing letter to Washington, honest General Heath naïvely exclaims, “What an opinion must General Burgoyne have of the authority of these states, to suppose that his money would be received at any higher rate than our own in public payment! Such payment would at once be depreciating our currency with a witness.” Washington was seriously annoyed and mortified by these vagaries, – the more so that he was at this very time endeavouring to arrange with Howe a general cartel for the exchange of prisoners; and he knew that the attempt to make thirty cents equal to a dollar would, as he said, “destroy the very idea of a cartel.”

While these discussions were going on, Congress, like the wicked king in the fairy tale, anxious to impose conditions unlikely to be fulfilled, demanded that General Burgoyne should make out a descriptive list of all the officers and soldiers in his army, in order that if any of them should thereafter be found serving against the United States they might be punished accordingly. As no such provision was contained in the convention, upon the faith of which Burgoyne had surrendered, he naturally regarded the demand as insulting, and at first refused to comply with it. He afterwards yielded the point, in his eagerness to liberate his soldiers; but meanwhile, in a letter to Gates, he had incautiously let fall the expression, “The publick faith is broke [sic];” and this remark, coming to the ears of Congress, was immediately laid hold of as a pretext for repudiating the convention altogether. It was argued that Burgoyne had charged the United States with bad faith, in order to have an excuse for repudiating the convention on his own part; and on the 8th of January, Congress accordingly resolved, “that the embarkation of Lieutenant-General Burgoyne and the troops under his command be suspended till a distinct and explicit ratification of the Convention of Saratoga shall be properly notified by the court of Great Britain to Congress.” Now as the British government could not give the required ratification without implicitly recognizing the independence of the United States, no further steps were taken in the matter, the “publick faith” was really broken, and the captured army was never sent home.

ENCAMPMENT OF THE CONVENTION TROOPS IN VIRGINIA

The behavior of Congress was simply inexcusable

In this wretched affair, Congress deliberately sacrificed principle to policy. It refused, on paltry pretexts, to carry out a solemn engagement which had been made by its accredited agent; and it did so simply through the fear that the British army might indirectly gain a possible reinforcement. Its conduct can be justified upon no grounds save such as would equally justify firing upon flags of truce. Nor can it be palliated even upon the lowest grounds of expediency, for, as it has been well said, “to a people struggling for political life the moral support derivable from the maintenance of honour and good faith was worth a dozen material victories." This sacrifice of principle to policy has served only to call down the condemnation of impartial historians, and to dim the lustre of the magnificent victory which the valour of our soldiers and the self-devotion of our people had won in the field. It was one out of many instances which show that, under any form of government, the moral sense of the governing body is likely to fall far below the highest moral standard recognized in the community.

What became of the captured army

The captured army was never sent home. The officers were treated as prisoners of war, and from time to time were exchanged. Burgoyne was allowed to go to England in the spring, and while still a prisoner on parole he took his seat in Parliament, and became conspicuous among the defenders of the American cause. The troops were detained in the neighbourhood of Boston until the autumn of 1778, when they were all transferred to Charlottesville in Virginia. Here a rude village was built on the brow of a pleasant ridge of hills, and gardens were laid out and planted. Much kind assistance was rendered in all this work by Thomas Jefferson, who was then living close by, on his estate at Monticello, and did everything in his power to make things comfortable for soldiers and officers. Two years afterward, when Virginia became the seat of war, some of them were removed to Winchester in the Shenandoah valley, to Frederick in Maryland, and to Lancaster in Pennsylvania. Those who wished to return to Europe were exchanged or allowed to escape. The greater number, especially of the Germans, preferred to stay in this country and become American citizens. Before the end of 1783 they had dispersed in all directions.

Such was the strange sequel of a campaign which, whether we consider the picturesqueness of its incidents or the magnitude of its results, was one of the most memorable in the history of mankind. Its varied scenes, framed in landscapes of grand and stirring beauty, had brought together such types of manhood as the feathered Mohawk sachem, the helmeted Brunswick dragoon, and the blue-frocked yeoman of New England, – types of ancient barbarism, of the militancy bequeathed from the Middle Ages, and of the industrial democracy that is to possess and control the future of the world. These men had mingled in a deadly struggle for the strategic centre of the Atlantic coast of North America, and now the fight had ended in the complete and overwhelming defeat of the forces of George III. Four years, indeed, – four years of sore distress and hope deferred, – were yet to pass before the fruits of this great victory could be gathered. The independence of the United States was not yet won; but the triumph at Saratoga set in motion a train of events from which the winning of independence was destined surely to follow.

VOLUME II

CHAPTER VIII

THE FRENCH ALLIANCE

The history of the Revolutionary War may be divided into four well-marked periods. The first period begins in 1761 with the resistance of James Otis to the general search-warrants, and it may be regarded as ending in June, 1774, when the acts for changing the government of Massachusetts were intended to take effect. This period of constitutional discussion culminated in the defiance of Great Britain by the people of Boston when they threw the tea into the harbour; and the acts of April, 1774, by which Parliament replied to the challenge, were virtually a declaration of war against the American colonies, though yet another year elapsed before the first bloodshed at Lexington.

The second period opens with June, 1774, when Massachusetts began to nullify the acts of Parliament, and it closes with the Declaration of Independence. During this period warfare was carried on only for the purpose of obtaining a redress of grievances, and without any design of bringing about a political separation of the English people in America from the English people in Britain. The theatre of war was mainly confined to New England and Canada; and while the Americans failed in the attempt to conquer Canada, their defensive warfare was crowned with success. The fighting of this period began with the victory of Lexington: it ended with the victory of Fort Moultrie. New England, except the island of Newport, was finally freed from the presence of the British, and no further attack was made upon the southern states for more than two years.

The essential feature of the third period, comprising the years 1776 and 1777, was the struggle for the state of New York and the great natural strategic line of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. Independence having been declared, the United States and Great Britain were now fighting each other single-handed, like two separate and foreign powers. It was the object of Great Britain to conquer the United States, and accordingly she struck at the commercial and military centre of the confederation. If she could have thoroughly conquered the state of New York and secured the line of the Hudson, she would have broken the confederation in two, and might perhaps have proceeded to overcome its different parts in detail. Hence in this period of the war everything centres about New York, such an outlying expedition as that of Howe against Philadelphia having no decisive military value except in its bearings upon the issue of the great central conflict. The strategy of the Americans was mainly defensive, though with regard to certain operations they assumed the offensive with brilliant success. The period began with the disasters of Long Island and Fort Washington; it ended with the triumph of Saratoga. As the net result of the two years’ work, the British had taken and held the cities of New York and Philadelphia and the town of Newport. The fortress of Ticonderoga, which they had likewise taken, they abandoned after the overthrow of Burgoyne; and in like manner they retired from the highlands of the Hudson, which the Americans now proceeded to occupy with a stronger force than before. In short, while the British had lost an army, they had conquered nothing but the ground on which they were actually encamped. Their attempt to break through the centre of the American position had ended in a total defeat, and it now began to seem clear to discerning minds that there was small chance of their being able to conquer the United States.

The fourth period, upon which we are now entering, begins with the immediate consequences of the victory of Saratoga, and extends to the treaty of 1783, whereby Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States. The military history of this period ends with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, in October, 1781, just four years after the surrender of Burgoyne. Except as regards the ultimate triumph of the American arms, the history of these four years presents striking contrasts to the history of the two years we have just passed in review. The struggle is no longer confined to the arms of Great Britain and the United States, but it extends in some measure over the whole civilized world, though it is only France, with its army and more especially its navy, that comes into direct relation with the final result in America. Moreover, instead of a well-aimed and concentrated blow at the centre of the American position, the last period of the war consisted partly of a straggling and disorderly series of movements, designed simply to harass the Americans and wear out their patience, and partly of an attempt to conquer the southern states and detach them from the Union. There is, accordingly, less dramatic unity in this last stage of the war than in the period which ended at Saratoga, and it is less susceptible of close and consecutive treatment; but, on the other hand, in richness of incidents and in variety of human interest it is in no wise inferior to the earlier periods.

Consternation in England

The first consequence of Saratoga was the retreat of the British government from every one of the positions for the sake of which it had begun the war. The news of Burgoyne’s surrender reached England just before Parliament adjourned for Christmas, and Lord North immediately gave notice that as soon as the holidays were over he should bring in measures for conciliating the Americans. The general feeling in England was one of amazement and consternation. In these days, when we are accustomed to contemplate military phenomena of enormous magnitude, when we have lately carried on a war in which more than two million men were under arms, and more than two million dollars were expended every day, we must not forget how different was the historic background upon which events were projected a century ago. Those were not the days of submarine telegraphs and Cunard steamships, and in trying to carry on warfare across three thousand miles of ocean the problem before George III. was far more arduous than that which the great Frederick had solved, when, acting on interior lines and supported by British gold, he overcame the combined assaults of France and Austria and Russia. The loss which Great Britain had now suffered could not easily be made good. At the same time it was generally believed, both in England and on the continent of Europe, that the loss of the American colonies would entail the ruin of the British Empire. Only a few wise political economists, “literary men,” like Adam Smith and Josiah Tucker, were far-seeing enough to escape this prodigious fallacy; even Chatham was misled by it. It was not understood that English America and English Britain were bound together by commercial and social ties so strong that no question of political union or severance could permanently affect them. It was not foreseen that within a century the dealings of Great Britain with the independent United States would far exceed her dealings with the rest of the world. On the contrary, it was believed that if political independence were conceded to the Americans, the whole stream of transatlantic commerce would somehow be diverted to other parts of Europe, that the British naval power would forthwith decay, and that England would sink from her imperial position into such a mere insular nation as that over which Henry VIII. had ruled. So greatly did men overrate political conditions; so far were they from appreciating those economic conditions which are so much more deep-seated and essential.