The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

As we had reason to imagine that the articles respecting the boundaries, the refugees, and fisheries did not correspond with the policy of this court, we did not communicate the preliminaries to the minister until after they were signed (and not even then the separate article). We hope that these considerations will excuse our having so far deviated from the spirit of our instructions. The Count de Vergennes, on perusing the articles, appeared surprised (but not displeased) at their being so favorable to us.

We beg leave to add our advice that copies be sent us of the accounts directed to be taken by the different States, of the unnecessary devastations and sufferings sustained by them from the enemy in the course of the war. Should they arrive before the signature of the definitive treaty, they might possibly answer very good purposes.

JOHN M. LUDLOW

Paradoxical as it may seem, two things must equally surprise the reader on studying the history of the war of American Independence—the first, that England should ever have considered it possible to succeed in subduing her revolted colonies; the second, that she should not have succeeded in doing so. At a time when steam had not yet baffled the winds, to dream of conquering by force of arms on the other side of the Atlantic a people of English race numbering between three millions and four millions with something like twelve hundred miles of seaboard, was surely an act of enormous folly. Horace Walpole had wittily said, at the very commencement of the so-called rebellion, that "if computed by the tract of the country it occupies, we, as so diminutive in comparison, ought rather be called in rebellion to that."

We have seen in our own days the difficulties experienced by the far more powerful and populous Northern States in quelling the secession of the Southern, when between the two there was no other frontier than at most a river, very often a mere ideal line, and when armies could be raised by a hundred thousand men at a time. England attempted a far more difficult task with forces which, till 1781, never reached 35,000 men, and never exceeded 42,075, including "provincials," i.e., American loyalists.

Yet it is impossible to doubt that, not once only, but repeatedly during the course of the struggle, England was on the verge of triumph. The American armies were perpetually melting away before the enemy directly through the practice of short enlistments, and indirectly through desertions. These desertions, if they might be often palliated by the straits to which the men were reduced through arrears in pay and want of supplies, arose in other cases, as after the retreat from New York, from sheer loss of heart in the cause. The main army under Washington was seldom even equal in number to that opposed to him. In the winter of 1776-1777, when his troops were only about four thousand strong, it is difficult to understand how it was that Sir William Howe, with more than double the number, should have failed to annihilate the American army.

In the winter of 1777-1778 the "dreadful situation of the army for want of provisions" made Washington "admire" that they should not have been excited to a general mutiny and desertion. In May, 1779, he hardly knew any resource for the American cause except in reënforcements from France, and did not know what might be the consequence if the enemy had it in his power to press the troops hard in the ensuing campaign. In December of that year his forces were "mouldering away daily," and he considered that Sir Henry Clinton, with more than twice his numbers, could "not justify remaining inactive with a force so superior." A year later he was compelled for want of clothing to discharge levies which he had so much trouble in obtaining, and "want of flour would have disbanded the whole army" if he had not adopted this expedient. In March, 1781, again, the crisis was "perilous," and, though he did not doubt the happy issue of the contest, he considered that the period for its accomplishment might be too far distant for a person of his years.

In April he wrote: "We cannot transport the provisions from the States in which they are assessed to the army, because we cannot pay the teamsters, who will no longer work for certificates. It is equally certain that our troops are approaching fast to nakedness, and that we have nothing to clothe them with; that our hospitals are without medicines, and our sick without nutriment except such as well men eat; and that our public works are at a stand and the artificers disbanding. It may be declared in a word that we are at the end of our tether, and that now or never our deliverance must come." Six months later, when Yorktown capitulated, the British forces still remaining in North America after the surrender of that garrison were more considerable than they had been as late as February, 1779; and Sir Henry Clinton even then declared that with a reënforcement of ten thousand men he would be responsible for the conquest of America.

How shall we explain either puzzle—that England should have so nearly missed success, to fail at last? or that America should have succeeded, after having been almost constantly on the brink of failure?