by more than 1,000 loyalists of that town and of the neighbouring country. Two-thirds of the property of New York was supposed to belong to Tories, and except in the city there appears to have been no serious disaffection. In some of the Southern colonies they were believed to form nearly half the population, and there was no colony in which they were not largely represented. There were also great multitudes who, though they would never take up arms for the King, though they perhaps agreed with the constitutional doctrines of the Revolutionists, dissented on grounds of principle, policy, or interest from the course which they were adopting. There were those who wished to wait till the natural increase of the colonies made coercion manifestly impossible, who feared to stake acknowledged liberties on the doubtful issue of an armed struggle, who shrank from measures that would destroy their private fortunes, who determined to stand aloof till the event showed which side was likely to win, who still dreamed of the possibility of resisting the Parliament without casting off allegiance to the Crown. If America succeeded in throwing off the yoke of England, it could hardly be without the assistance of France, and many feared that France would thus acquire a power on the Continent far more dangerous than that of England to the liberties of the colonies. Was it not likely, too, that an independent America would degenerate, as so many of the best judges had predicted, into a multitude of petty, heterogeneous, feeble, and perhaps hostile States? Was it not certain that the cost of the struggle and the burden of independence would drain its purse of far more money than England was ever likely to ask for the defence of her Empire? Was it not possible that the lawless and anarchical spirit which had of late years been steadily growing, and which the patriotic party had actively encouraged, would gain the upper hand, and that the whole fabric of society would be dissolved? John Adams in his Diary relates the 'profound melancholy' which fell upon him in one of the most critical moments of the struggle, when a man whom he knew to be a horse-jockey and a cheat, and whom he had often defended as an advocate in the 1 Parl. Hist. xviii. 123-129. Sparks' Life of Washington. Force's American Archives (4th series), i. 773, 957. CH. XII. GENERAL APATHY. 443 law courts, came to him and expressed the unbounded gratitude which he felt for the great things which Adams and his colleagues had done. 'We can never,' he said, 'be grateful enough to you. There are now no courts of justice in this province, and I hope there will never be another.' 'Is this the object,' Adams continued, for which I have been contending? said I to myself. . . . Are these the sentiments of such people, and how many of them are there in the country? Half the nation, for what I know; for half the nation are debtors, if not more, and these have been in all countries the sentiments of debtors. If the power of the country should get into such hands-and there is great danger that it will-to what purpose have we sacrificed our time, health, and everything else?'1 Misgivings of this kind must have passed through many minds, and the older colonists were not of the stuff of which ardent soldiers are made. Among the poor, vagrant, adventurous immigrants who had lately poured in by thousands from Ireland and Scotland, there was indeed a keen military spirit, and it was these men who ultimately bore the chief part in the war of independence; but the older and more settled colonists were men of a very different type. Shrewd, prosperous, and well-educated farmers, industrious, money-loving, and eminently domestic, they were men who, if they were compelled to fight, would do so with courage and intelligence, but who cared little or nothing for military glory, and grudged every hour that separated them from their families and their farms. Such men were dragged very reluctantly into the struggle. The American Revolution, like most others, was the work of an energetic minority, who succeeded in committing an undecided and fluctuating majority to courses for which they had little love, and leading them step by step to a position from which it was impossible to recede. 1 Adams' Works, ii. 420. 2 One of the most remarkable documents relating to the state of opinion in America is the examination of Galloway (late Speaker of the House of Assembly in Pennsylvania) by a Committee of the House of Commons, June 16, 1779. As a loyalist, his mind was no doubt biassed, but he To the last, however, we find was a very able and honest man, and he had much more than common means of forming a correct judgment. He says, 'I do not believe, from the best knowledge I have of that time [the beginning of the rebellion], that one-fifth of the people had independence in view. . . . Many of those who have appeared in support of the vacillation, uncertainty, half-measures, and in large classes a great apparent apathy. In June 1775, the Provincial Congress of New York received two startling pieces of intelligence, that Washington was about to pass through their city on his way to Cambridge, and that Tryon, the royal governor, had just arrived in the harbour. The Congress, though it was an essentially Whig body, and had assumed an attitude which was virtually rebellion, still dreaded the necessity of declaring itself irrevocably on either side, and it ultimately ordered the colonel of militia to dispose of his troops so as to receive ' either the General or Governor Tryon, whichever should first arrive, and wait on both as well as circumstances would admit.' The dominant Quaker party of Pennsylvania was at least as hostile to rebellion as to imperial taxation, and Chastellux justified the very democratic institutions which Franklin established in that province when the Revolution had begun, on the ground that it was necessary to employ a sort of seduction in order to conduct a timid and avaricious people to independence, who were besides so divided in their opinions that the Republican party was scarcely stronger than the other.' 2 In every Southern colony a similar division and a similar hesitation may be detected. 1 present rebellion have by a variety of means been compelled. I think I may venture to say that many more than four-fifths of the people would prefer an union with Great Britain upon constitutional principles to that of independence.' Galloway was asked the following question: That part of the rebel army that enlisted in the service of the Congress-were they chiefly composed of natives of America, or were the greatest part of them English, Scotch, and Irish?' Galloway answered, 'The names and places of their nativity being taken down, I can answer the question with precision. There were scarcely onefourth natives of America-about one-half Irish-the other fourth were English and Scotch." This last answer, however, must be qualified by a subsequent answer, that he judged of the country of the troops by the deserters who came over to the number of between 2,000 and 3,000, at the time when Galloway was with Sir W. Howe at Philadelphia. I have no doubt that in the beginning of the war the proportion of pure Americans in the army was much larger, as it was chiefly recruited in New England, where the population was most unmixed. It is stated that more than a fourth part of the continental soldiers employed during the war were from Massachusetts. See Greene's Historical View of the Ameri can Revolution, p. 235. Galloway's very remarkable evidence was reprinted at Philadelphia in 1855. In his Letters to a Nobleman on the Conduct of the War, Galloway reiterates his assertion that three-fourths of the rebel army have been generally composed of English, Scotch, and Irish, while scarcely the small proportion of onefourth are American, notwithstanding the severe and arbitrary laws to force them into the service.'-P. 25. See a curious note in Washington's Works, iii. 8. 2 Chastellux, Travels in North America, Eng. trans. i. 332. CH. XII. DEFECTS OF THE AMERICAN ARMY. 445 The result of all this was, that there was much less genuine military enthusiasm than might have been expected. When Washington arrived at Cambridge to command the army, he found that it nominally consisted of about 17,000 men, but that not more than 14,500 were actually available for service, and they had to guard a line extending for nearly twelve miles, in face of a force of at least 9,000 regular troops, besides seamen and loyalists. Urgent demands were made to the different colonies to send recruits, but they were very imperfectly responded to. Colonel Lee, in a remarkable letter on the military prospects of the Americans, estimated that in three or four months the colonists could easily have an efficient army of 100,000 infantry.' As a matter of fact, a month's recruiting during this most critical period produced only 5,000 men. There was abundant courage and energy among the soldiers, but there was very little subordination, discipline, or self-sacrifice. Each body of troops had been raised by the laws of its own colony, and it was reluctant to obey any other authority. Washington complained bitterly of the egregious want of public spirit' in his army. The Congress had made rules for its regulation. The troops positively refused to accept them, as they had not enlisted on those terms, and Washington was obliged to yield, except in the case of new recruits. The Congress had appointed a number of officers, but the troops rebelled violently against their choice, and it soon became evident that they would only remain at their post as long as they served under such officers as they pleased." The absence of any social difference between officers and soldiers greatly aggravated the difficulty of enforcing discipline. The local feeling was so strong that General Schuyler gave it as his deliberate opinion that 'troops from the colony of Connecticut will not bear with a general from another colony.' The short period for which the troops had consented to enlist made it impossible to give them steadiness or discipline, to count upon the future, or to engage in enterprises of magnitude or continuity. What little subordination had been attained in the beginning of the period was 6 3 American Remembrancer, 1776, part i. p. 25. 2 Washington's Works, iii. 176. 3 Ibid. p. 279. Ibid. p. 243; see too p. 151. destroyed at the close, for the officers were obliged to connive at every kind of relaxation of discipline in order to persuade their soldiers to re-enlist.' Personal recriminations and jealousies, quarrels about rank and pay and service, were incessant. Great numbers held aloof from enlisting, imagining that the distress of their cause would oblige the Congress to offer large bounties,* no possible inducement could persuade a large proportion of the soldiers to re-enlist when their short time of service had expired, and there were instances of gross selfishness and misconduct among the disbanding soldiers. The term for which the Connecticut troops had enlisted expired in December, and the whole body, amounting to some 5,000 men, absolutely refused to re-enlist. It was vainly represented to them that their desertion threatened the whole American cause with absolute ruin. The utmost that the most strenuous exertions could effect was, that they would delay their departure for ten days. There were bitter complaints that Congress granted no bounties, leaving this to the option of the several colonies, and also that the scale of pay, though very liberal, was lower than what they might have obtained in other employments. Great numbers pretended sickness, in order to escape from the service; great numbers would only continue in the army on the condition of obtaining long furloughs at a time when every man was needed for the security of the lines." There was a constant fear of concentrating too much power in military hands, and of building 1 Washington's Works, iii. p. 280. 4 Ibid. p. 191. 5 Washington's letters are full of complaints on the subject. I will quote a few lines from a letter of Nov. 28, 1775. 'Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of virtue, such stockjobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another in this great change of military arrangement, I never saw before, and pray God's mercy that I may never be witness to again. . . . I have been obliged to allow furloughs as far as fifty men to a regiment, and the officers, I am persuaded, indulge as many more... Such a mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen. Could I have foreseen what I have experienced, and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command.' (Washington's Works, iii. 178, 179.) No troops,' he writes in another letter, 'were ever better provided or higher paid, yet their backwardness to enlist for another year is amazing. It grieves me to see so little of that patriotic spirit which I was taught to believe was characteristic of this people.' (Ibid. p. 181.) The present soldiery are in expectation of drawing from the landed interest and farmers a bounty equal to that given at the commencement of this army, and therefore they keep aloof.' Ibid. p. 188. |