The Land We Live In

H >> Henry Mann >> The Land We Live In

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In 1750 the Ohio Company, formed for the purpose of colonizing the
country on the river of that name, surveyed its banks as far as the site
of Louisville. The French, resolved to defend their title to the region
west of the mountains, crossed Lake Erie, and established posts at
Presque Isle, at Le Boeuf, and at Venango on the Allegheny River.
Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent a messenger to warn the French not
to advance. He selected for this task a young man named George
Washington, a land surveyor, who, notwithstanding his youth, had made a
good impression as a person of capacity and courage, well-fitted for the
arduous and delicate undertaking. Washington well performed his task
although the French, as might have been expected, paid no heed to his
warning. In the spring of 1754, a party of English began to build a fort
where Pittsburg now stands. The French drove them off and erected Fort
Duquesne. A regiment of Virginia troops was already marching toward the
place. Upon the death of its leading officer, George Washington, the
lieutenant-colonel, took command. Washington, overwhelmed by the superior
numbers of the French, was compelled to surrender, and the French, for
the time, were masters of the Ohio.

This reverse did not diminish the esteem in which Washington was held by
the Virginians, and by those of the mother country who came in contact
with him. When General Edward Braddock, in 1755, started on his ill-fated
expedition for the capture of Duquesne with a force of about two thousand
men, including the British regulars and the colonial militia, Washington
accompanied the British general as one of his staff. Braddock was a
gallant soldier, but imperious, and self-willed, and he looked almost
with contempt upon the American troops. He made a forced march with
twelve hundred men in order to surprise the French at Duquesne before
they could receive reinforcements. Colonel Dunbar followed with the
remainder of the army and the wagon-train. It was a delightful July
morning when the British soldiers and colonists crossed a ford of the
Monongahela, and advanced in solid platoons along the southern bank of
the stream in the direction of the fort. Washington advised a disposition
of the troops more in accordance with forest warfare, but Braddock
haughtily rejected the advice of the "provincial colonel," as he called
Washington. The army moved on, recrossed the river to the north side, and
continued the march to Duquesne. The news of the British advance had been
carried to the fort by Indian scouts. The French at first thought of
abandoning the post, but they decided to attack the British with the aid
of Indian allies. De Beaujeu led the French and Indians. The British were
proceeding in fancied security when the forest rang with Indian yells,
and a volley of bullets and flying arrows dealt death in their ranks. The
regular troops were thrown into confusion, and Braddock tried
courageously to rally them. Washington showed the admirable qualities
which afterward made him victor in the Revolution. Cool and fearless amid
the frantic shouts of the foe and the panic of the British soldiery, he
gave Braddock invaluable assistance in endeavoring to retrieve the
fortunes of the day. The provincials fought frontier fashion, nearly all
losing their lives, but not without picking off many of their enemies.
Beaujeu, the French commander, was killed in the opening of the
engagement. Of eighty-six English officers sixty-three were killed or
wounded; and about one-half the private soldiers fell, while a number
were made prisoners. For two hours the battle raged, until Braddock,
having had five horses shot under him, went down himself, mortally
wounded. Then the regulars that remained took to flight, and Washington,
left in command; ordered a retreat, carrying with him his dying general.
Braddock died three days after the battle, expressing regret that he had
not followed the counsel of Washington. The British prisoners were taken
to Duquesne, and that evening the Indians lighted fires on the banks of
the Allegheny River, near the fort, and tortured the captives to death.
An English boy who was a prisoner at Duquesne, having been previously
captured, and who afterward related his experience in a narrative, a copy
of which the writer has examined, says that the cries of the victims
could be heard in the fort. The boy himself was subjected to closer
confinement than usual, apparently for fear that the savages might demand
that he be given up to them.

CHAPTER XIV.

Expulsion of the Acadians--A Cruel Deportation--The Marquis De Montcalm
--The Fort William Henry Massacre--Defeat of Abercrombie--William
Pitt Prosecutes the War Vigorously--Fort Duquesne Reduced--Louisburg
Again Captured--Wolfe Attacks Quebec--Battle of the Plains of Abraham
--Wolfe and Montcalm Mortally Wounded--Quebec Surrenders--New France a
Dream of the Past--Pontiac's War.

American history contains no sadder story than the expulsion of the
Acadians, or French settlers of Nova Scotia. The act may have been
justifiable on the ground of military necessity; the Acadians were not
loyal subjects, and they would have eagerly welcomed the expulsion of the
British from North America. Indeed their conduct might have been
construed as treasonable, and the English had ground for regarding them
as enemies of the British crown. Their dispersion weakened the French
cause at a time when that cause seemed in the ascendant, and when
Braddock's unavenged defeat had reanimated the French with the hope of
driving the English from America. Yet even if the deportation of the
Acadians was required by the supreme law of self-preservation, and
justifiable on the ground of their more than merely passive disloyalty,
the manner of that deportation could not be justified. The separation of
families, many of them never reunited, was a crime against humanity; the
conversion of an honest, industrious and thrifty peasantry into a host of
penniless vagrants, scattered like Ishmaelites through hostile colonies,
was a wrong as cruel as it was unnecessary. Colonized in South Carolina
or Georgia, the Acadians could hardly have been a menace to the power of
Great Britain, while the Huguenot element in those regions, understanding
the Acadian tongue, would have kept watch and ward against possible
disloyalty. It is a pathetic feature of this most painful episode that
the Huguenots, themselves driven out of France by the merciless tyranny
of a Roman Catholic king, gave kindly relief to such Roman Catholic
exiles from Acadia as were cast among them. They proved their true
Christian spirit by returning good for evil. About six thousand of the
Acadians were deported from their native land, and scattered the length
and breadth of the English colonies. Many made their way to Louisiana,
then a French possession, and their descendants still form a distinct
class in that State. Some even sought refuge among the Indians, and found
the barbarian kinder than their civilized persecutors. Longfellow's poem,
"Evangeline," is based on the touching story of Acadia. The French cause
was greatly strengthened by the arrival in 1756 of the Marquis de
Montcalm, a distinguished soldier, to take command of the French forces
in Canada. Montcalm displayed not only courage and skill, but humanity
likewise, in the management of his campaigns, and history relieves him of
responsibility for the horrid massacre by Indians of the captured English
garrison of Fort William Henry, after a safe escort to Fort Edward had
been promised to the captives. The facts are that both British and French
used the Indians as allies regardless of their savage practices, but that
the French, as at Fort Duquesne, showed less ability to restrain the
savages after a victory. In the following summer--1758--Montcalm
inflicted a most disastrous defeat at Ticonderoga on fifteen thousand
British and colonial troops, led by General Abercrombie. The French force
numbered only four thousand French and Indians. The English attempted to
carry the works by assault, without the aid of artillery, and were mowed
down by the fire of the French posted behind insuperable barriers. The
English loss was about two thousand, while that of the French was
inconsiderable. This was the last important success of the French in
America. A master hand had seized the helm in Great Britain.

William Pitt, the "Great Commoner," determined upon a vigorous
prosecution of the war in America. General John Forbes was sent, in 1758,
with about nine thousand men to reduce Fort Duquesne. The illness which
caused his death in the following year may be fairly accepted in excuse
and explanation of the incompetent management of the expedition, and its
almost fatal delays. Fortunately the French appeared to have lost the
vigor and daring which they had displayed in the defeat of Braddock, and
the sullen roar of an explosion, when the British troops were within a
few miles of Duquesne, gave notice that it had been abandoned without a
blow. General Forbes changed the name of the place to Fort Pitt, in honor
of that illustrious minister to whose energetic direction of affairs was
largely due the expulsion of the French arms from North America. When
Westminster Abbey shall have crumbled over the tombs of Britain's heroes,
and the House of Hanover shall have joined the misty dynasties of the
past, Pittsburg will remain a monument, growing in grandeur with the
progress of ages, to England's great statesman of the eighteenth century.

Louisburg also fell in 1758, and in the following year the English
prepared to end the struggle by an attack on Quebec. Pitt placed at the
head of the expedition a young general, James Wolfe, who had
distinguished himself at the capture of Louisburg. Wolfe had about eight
thousand troops under a convoy of twenty-two line-of-battleships, and as
many frigates and smaller armed vessels. Montcalm defended the city with
about seven thousand Frenchmen and Indians. The heights on which the
upper town of Quebec was situated, rising almost perpendicularly at one
point of three hundred feet above the river, and extending back in a
lofty plateau called the Plains of Abraham, seemed to defy successful
attack. Wolfe spent the summer in fruitless efforts to reduce Quebec. At
length he learned that the precipice fronting on the river and supposed
to be impassable, could be scaled at a point a short distance above the
town, where a narrow ravine gave access to the plateau. On the evening of
September 12, the British vessels, loaded with troops, floated with the
inflowing tide some distance up the river. Then past midnight, while the
sky was black with clouds, the ships silently and undetected by the
French floated down to the designated landing-place. The troops were
taken on shore in flat-bottomed boats, with muffled oars. At dawn
Lieutenant-Colonel William Howe led the advance up the ravine, drove back
the guard at the summit, and protected the ascent of the army. The
garrison and people of Quebec awoke to see the redcoats in battle array
on the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm soon confronted the British. Both of
the heroic commanders knew and felt all that was at stake on the fate of
the day, and they both fought with a courage that gave a splendid example
to their men. Wolfe, twice wounded, continued to give orders until
mortally wounded he fell. Montcalm fell nearly at the same time, mortally
wounded, and his troops, already wavering before the irresistible onset
of the British, broke and fled. When told that death was near, "So much
the better," said Montcalm, "I will not live to see the surrender of
Quebec." "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace," said the English
commander, on hearing that victory was assured. Quebec was surrendered a
few days later. Forts Niagara and Ticonderoga had already fallen.

Spain, having taken side with France, lost Cuba and the Philippine
Islands to the English, but in the treaty of Paris of 1763, England gave
those islands to Spain and received Florida in exchange. France ceded to
Spain, in order to compensate that power for the loss of Florida, the
city of New Orleans, and all the vast and indefinite territory known as
Louisiana, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the unexplored regions
of the northwest. New France was a dream of the past.

The French policy in America had one essential and fatal feature. The
French came more as a garrison than as colonists. They came to govern,
rather than possess the land, to rule, but not to supplant the natives of
the soil. This policy insured some immediate strength, because the
Indians were naturally less jealous of Europeans who did not threaten
their hunting-grounds. On the other hand the ultimate failure of such a
course was inevitable, in dealing as rivals and antagonists with a people
who had come to possess the land, to drive out the Indian, to make the
New World their home and a heritage for their descendants. The English
settlers might be driven back for a time; their cabins might be turned
into ashes, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife leave dire evidence of
savage vengeance and Gallic inhumanity. But the rally was as certain as
the raid was sudden. A garrison might be massacred; a colony could not be
exterminated, and the defeats of Braddock and Abercrombie only burned
into English breasts the resolution to tear down forever on the American
continent the flag which floated over the evidence of England's dishonor.

The Algonquin Indians, who had regarded the French as allies and
protectors, were now left to defend themselves against the English.
Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, conceived the idea of inducing all the
tribes to unite in a general attack upon the English settlements as a
last desperate resort to stay the advance of the whites. Pontiac is
supposed to have led the Ottawas who assisted the French in defeating
Braddock, and he perhaps underrated the power and prowess of his British
antagonists. He was an able chieftain, of the same type as King Philip,
Tecumseh and Sitting Bull. He saw that the white man and the red man
could not possess the land together, and he determined to make a stand in
behalf of his race. The struggle lasted for about two years, attended by
the usual barbarities of savage warfare, and ended in the death of
Pontiac, who, after suing for peace, was murdered by a drunken Indian,
bribed by an English trader with a barrel of rum to commit the deed.
Instead of preventing, Pontiac's War only hastened the flight of the
Indian and the march of the colonists toward the setting sun.

THIRD PERIOD.

The Revolution.

CHAPTER XV.

Causes of the Revolution--The Act of Navigation--Acts of Trade--Odious
Customs Laws--English Jealousy of New England--Effect of Restrictions on
Colonial Trade--Du Chatelet Foresees Rebellion and Independence--The
Revolution a Struggle for More Than Political Freedom.

It was not for the sake of the colonists that England had assisted them
in driving the French from America, but with the wholly selfish aim of
building up the trade and commerce of Great Britain. European nations
looked upon their American colonies simply as resources from which the
mother country might become enriched, and in this respect the policy of
England was not different from that of Spain, described in the beginning
of this volume. As early as 1625 an English author (Hagthorne) wrote that
even in time of peace it was the purpose and aim of England to undermine
and beat the Dutch and Spaniards out of their trades, "which may not
improperly be called a war, for the deprivation and cutting off the
trades of a kingdom may be to some prince more loss if his revenues
depend thereon than the killing of his armies." The wars against Holland,
which resulted in the subjection to the British crown of the colonial
possessions of that industrious people, and which compelled the fleets of
the United Provinces to acknowledge British supremacy on the high seas,
were in the line of commercial aggrandizement, and the Navigation Act
transferred to England a large share of the Dutch carrying trade, and
enriched English shipowners with an utterly selfish indifference to the
welfare of English colonies.

When the colonists, their western bounds no longer threatened by
civilized foes, their plantations flourishing and their seaport towns
wealthy with the profits of a commerce carried on in contempt of imperial
restrictions, began to feel and to assert that they were entitled to all
the rights of freeborn Englishmen, and to the same commercial and
industrial independence enjoyed by loyal subjects in England, they were
surprised to learn that Parliament and the English people regarded them
not as freemen, but as tributaries. The colonists were themselves loyal,
even up to the hour when they were compelled by stubborn tyranny to
assert the right of revolution, for, to quote the language of John Adams,
"it is true there always existed in the colonies a desire of independence
of Parliament in the articles of internal taxation and internal policy,
and a very general, if not universal opinion, that they were
constitutionally entitled to it, and as general a determination to
maintain and defend it. But there never existed a desire of independence
of the Crown, or of general regulations of commerce for the equal and
impartial benefit of all parts of the empire." "If any man," said the
same great statesman, "wishes to investigate thoroughly the causes,
feelings and principles of the Revolution, he must study this Act of
Navigation, and the Acts of Trade, as a philosopher, a politician and a
philanthropist."

When the Act of Navigation was originally passed, in the Cromwell period,
it is probable that the colonies were not seriously in the minds of the
people and of Parliament. The act was aimed, as we have before stated, at
the Dutch, and was effective for the purposes intended; but within the
decade that elapsed before its re-enactment under the Restoration, the
colonial trade had grown with a vigor that aroused jealousy and
uneasiness at home, and the Act of Navigation was soon followed, in 1663,
by the first of the Acts of Trade, which provided that no supplies should
be imported into any colony, except what had been actually shipped in an
English port, and carried directly thence to the importing colony. This
cut the colonies off from direct trade with any foreign country, and made
England the depot for all necessaries or luxuries which the colonies
desired, and which they could not obtain in America. Nine years later, in
1672, followed another act "for the better securing the plantation
trade," which recited that the colonists had, contrary to the express
letter of the aforesaid laws, brought into diverse parts of Europe great
quantities of their growth, productions and manufactures, sugar, tobacco,
cotton, wool and dye woods being particularly enumerated in the list, and
that the trade and navigation in those commodities from one plantation to
another had been greatly increased, and provided that all colonial
commodities should either be shipped to England or Wales before being
imported into another colony, or that a customs duty should be paid on
such commodities equivalent to the cost of conveying the same to England,
and thence to the colony for which they were destined. For instance, if a
merchant in Rhode Island desired to sell some product of the colony of
Massachusetts in New York, and to forward the same by a vessel, either a
bond had to be given that the commodity would be transported to England,
or a duty had to be paid, in money or in goods sufficiently onerous to
protect the English merchant and shipowner against serious colonial
competition in the carrying trade.

The above act was followed up by another providing penalties for
attempted violation of the customs laws. In this statute no mention was
made of the plantations and its general tenor indicated that it was
intended to apply to Great Britain only, providing, as it did, for the
searching of houses and dwellings for smuggled goods by virtue of a writ
of assistance under the seal of His Majesty's court of exchequer. Under
William the Third, who was as arbitrary a monarch toward the colonies as
the second James had been, the statute was made directly applicable to
the plantation trade, with the provision that "the like assistance shall
be given to the said officers in the execution of their office, as by the
last-mentioned act is provided for the officers in England." It was on
the question of whether such a writ could be issued from a colonial court
that James Otis made the famous speech in which he arraigned the
commercial policy of England, stripped the veil of reform from the bust
of the Stadtholder-King, and awakened the colonists to a throbbing sense
of English oppression and of American wrongs--the oration which, in the
language of John Adams, who heard it, "breathed into this nation the
breath of life."

* * *

It is needless to follow the numerous Acts of Trade in their order, for
they were all in a line with the accepted and established principle of
that age in England that the colonies should minister to the commercial
aggrandizement of the mother country, instead of being the centres of an
independent traffic, that they should be communities for the consumption
of British manufactures and the feeding of British trade. New England was
especially the object of English jealousy and restriction, and for
reasons, as given by Sir Josiah Child, in his "New Discourse on Trade,"
written about the year 1677, that are creditable to the founders of those
States, for after speaking of the people of Virginia and the Barbadoes as
a loose vagrant sort, "vicious and destitute of means to live at home,
gathered up about the streets of London or other places, and who, had
there been no English foreign plantation in the world, must have come to
be hanged or starved or died untimely of those miserable diseases that
proceed from want and vice, or have sold themselves as soldiers to be
knocked on the head, or at best, by begging or stealing two shillings and
sixpence, have made their way to Holland to become servants to the Dutch,
who refuse none," he goes on to describe "a people whose frugality,
industry and temperance and the happiness of whose laws and institutions,
do promise to themselves long life, with a wonderful increase of people,
riches and power." But, after paying this probably reluctant tribute to
New England virtue and industry, he frankly avows his full sympathy with
the restrictive system, and adds that "there is nothing more prejudicial
and in prospect more dangerous to any mother kingdom than the increase of
shipping in her colonies, plantations and provinces." It is no wonder
that John Adams said that he never read these authors without being set
on fire, and that at last the same fire spread to every patriotic breast.

The Acts of Navigation and of Trade were not the dead letters that some
superficial writers and readers have seen fit to term them. It is true
that obedience was reluctant and slow, and that evasion was extensive,
and it is also true, that colonial commerce flourished in spite of the
restrictions; but it should be remembered that the prolonged wars in
which England was engaged gave lucrative opportunities for privateering,
and that even the customs duties, though intended to be virtually
prohibitory, were not heavy enough to overcome the advantages which the
colonists enjoyed. In Rhode Island the General Assembly asserted and
maintained the right to regulate the fees of the customs officers, and,
as far as was possible, the collection of the dues. The shipping of the
colony rapidly increased, and in 1731 included two vessels from England,
as many from Holland and the Mediterranean, and ten or twelve from the
West Indies, and ten years later numbered one hundred and twenty vessels
engaged in the West Indian, African, European and coasting trade. The
period preceding the Revolution witnessed New England's greatest
commercial prosperity, and it was in that age that Moses Brown and other
enterprising merchants and shipowners laid the foundation of fortunes, a
liberal share of which has been expended with illustrious munificence in
monuments of learning, of art and of charity. As for the restrictions
upon domestic industry, they were not severely felt among a people
devoted, in the country to agriculture, and in the towns to local traffic
and shipping, and the American farmer who wore homespun attire, did not
realize the harshness or appreciate the purpose of the statute which
prohibited the export of wool, or woolen manufactures. As for the
Southern planter, the question of fostering domestic manufactures never
entered his thoughts. He raised his tobacco and his cotton, exported them
to England, and got what goods he needed there just as his descendants,
in a later age, procured the manufactured necessities and luxuries of
life from the depots of New England trade.[1]

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