secession of the largest and richest part of the proud empire, the announcement was received with joy at the courts of Europe. The Declaration itself, to be sure, was not enough to tempt France, verging as she was toward bankruptcy and revolution, to take the lead publicly in building up a coalition of European rivals of Britain's imperial power. Another year and a decided American victory in the field were necessary to bring about that result. But from the moment of the Declaration secret aid from France in money, arms, and clothing was liberally supplied, with the connivance of the ministers of Louis XVI. The French government allowed and even encouraged its officers to solicit commands in the American army. When it issued orders to stop ships sailing for America with contraband goods, it supplied supplementary instructions to make their escape easy. It ostentatiously forbade the use of French ports to American privateers while privately assuring the American agents that the prize courts would not interfere with "the enjoyment of the whole harvest of plunder upon British commerce." And all the while, the French foreign office was pledging to the British ambassador "the perfect neutrality and pacific intentions" of King Louis's government. Whether or not the American army could have held together without the aid of France we cannot tell, for we cannot set a limit to the tenacious, patient courage of George Washington. The judicious Lecky believed that most of the American states would have abandoned the struggle without this help from Europe, and that, although New England and Virginia might have kept up a local warfare for a time, "the peace party would have soon gained the ascendent and the colonies been reunited to the mother country." Washington's army, which had been transferred to New York after the British evacuated Boston, heard the Declaration read in what is now City Hall Square, on July 9, and hailed it with joy. The leaden equestrian statue of George III was thrown down to be melted into bullets, and the king's arms on public buildings were torn down and burned in boisterous bonfires, all in the sight of General Howe's troops on Staten Island. In the dark days of the autumn of 1776, when the American hopes seemed to have faded like a summer's flower, when Washington was reluctantly withdrawing his dwindling army across the state of New Jersey and writing that the game was "pretty well up," when no friendly foreign power had as yet taken us by the hand, it is doubtful whether anything else could have held the ill-kept soldiers and the despairing statesmen to their task than that pledge of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of independence. WAR AND PEACE More than a year passed after the signing of the Declaration of Independence before there was much likelihood that the American states would succeed in assuming that "separate and equal station among the powers of the earth" to which they aspired. Next to their own indomitable leader, the patriot army had the commander of the British forces to thank that it was not annihilated in any one of a half dozen desperate situations in which it found itself in the autumn and winter of 1776-1777. Richard, Lord Howe, admiral in the British navy, sailed into New York harbor a week after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, bringing reënforcements to his brother William, who was encamped on Staten Island. When the forces of the Howes were joined by Sir Henry Clinton's troops, returning from an unsuccessful attack on Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor, and by some 8000 German mercenaries hired from the princes of Anhalt, Brunswick, and Hesse, there were nearly 35,000 soldiers in the British ranks— the largest army gathered on American soil till the Civil War. To oppose this formidable force Washington had nominally about 18,000 men, but they were poorly equipped and ill trained. General Israel Putnam with 8000 patriot troops fortified Brooklyn Heights and tried to hold Long Island against Howe; but the British easily outflanked and defeated Putnam's advance lines under Generals Hull and Stirling (August 27), and Howe had the Americans completely at his mercy in their trenches at Brooklyn. All he had to do was to send a warship into the East River and shut off their retreat to the New York side. The ferry was left open, however, and Washington collected craft of all sorts along the shore and transported his entire army to the Manhattan side under the cover of a heavy fog. Howe's advance pickets arrived at the water's edge in time to fire a few scattering volleys at the vanishing boats. This amazing apathy of General Howe was of a piece with his conduct for the next ten months. He followed Washington's army more like a detective shadowing a suspected criminal than like a general with a vastly superior army seeking his prey. When he got close enough to the patriot army to bring it to bay, as at Harlem Heights or White Plains, he was satisfied with inflicting a defeat and letting the Americans continue their retreat. If he captured the garrisons at Forts Washington and Lee, it was only after allowing the Americans plenty of time to abandon the strongholds if they wished to. When he was leisurely pursuing the dwindling army across the state of New Jersey, he timed his march so that his advance columns entered Trenton just as Washington had got his last boatload of troops across the Delaware to the Pennsylvania side. At any moment of the five months (January to May, 1777) during which Washington's army of never more than 4000 men lay at Morristown, New Jersey, in winter quarters, a detachment from Howe's army at New York or Cornwallis's at New Brunswick might have annihilated the patriots and ended the war. Washington himself wrote in March: "If the enemy do not move, it will be a miracle. Nothing but ignorance of our numbers and situation can protect us." But Howe was ignorant of neither, and yet he did not move. Desertions from Washington's army were constant. The New Jersey farmers who defended their cattle, chickens, and vegetables against the patriot scouts, in order that they might sell them at high prices in hard gold to the British in New York, could give their customers all the information they wished. The plain fact is that the commander of King George's forces in America did not wish to conquer the Americans by the sword. He was a Whig, although the king's cousin, and he had promised his constituents at Nottingham that he would not fight to subdue the people whom Burke and Chatham lauded. He was the brother of the valiant George Howe, who had fallen in Abercrombie's ill-fated attack on Ticonderoga (1758) and whose monument in Westminster Abbey had been built by the grateful generosity of the colony of Massachusetts. He was himself a veteran of the French wars in America, having commanded a regiment at Louisburg (1758) and climbed the steep path of the Anse de Foulon in the vanguard of Wolfe's band of volunteers for the surprise of the pickets at Quebec. He and his brother Lord Richard bore the commission from the king to pardon the Americans individually and collectively on their return to allegiance to the crown. This olive branch Howe carried in his right hand, the sword in his left. He believed that the great majority of Americans were really loyal to the king, but had been led astray by demagogues and firebrands. He thought, not without reason, that the patriot army would disintegrate, composed as it was of shifting levies of militia, while the people of New Jersey and the other central states flocked in increasing numbers to the Tory camp. Some 3000 had accepted the royal proclamation of pardon in December, 1776, and were carrying the certificates of loyalty snugly in their coat pockets to frighten off any British or Hessian raiders. 1 Whether Howe's conduct is to be explained by his own amiable indolence or by the complication of British politics, it was of utmost service to the patriot cause. He spared Washington's army until the sentiment of independence had taken deep root in America; until the new state governments were 1 After the battle of Long Island, Lord Richard sent General Sullivan to Congress to ask for a conference. Franklin, Adams, and Rutledge went to his headquarters on Staten Island and were regaled on his excellent mutton and claret, but came to no terms. Howe expressed his regret that he had not arrived in America before July 4. When he spoke of his reluctance to conquer the Americans, Franklin replied, "We will do our utmost to save your lordship that embarrassment." |