1000 word American History Essay using 3rd person past tense/active voice

England's Calamitous War

Certainly the American Revolution was fir11 of men on both sides who were distinguishedfor heroism and courage against adversity. But this is only halfthe story. Throughout the Revolution, English and Americans alike were plagued with di'culties. T h e Arnericans,for theirpart, were hardly united aboutfighting

, . for independewc. Many people opposed the rebellion and remained f o y h ⁢sh subjects; and many others were indifferent to the whole thing. While the Amer- icans may have had the bettergeneral in George Wash~ngton, colonial volunteers ofien fought without regard for rules, discipline, or orders, chargingforward with all the organization ofstampeding cattle. And cattle would have been immeas- urably easier to drill. Baron von Steuben, the Prussian drillmaster, became so exasperated with the sloppiness and ind~yerence of colonial troops that he once screamed at them in French: "Viens, Walker, mon ami, mon bon ami! Sacri! Coddam degaucheries of dese baudats!je ne puis plus. I can curse dem no more!" Then, as if lack of discipline were not bad enough, many volunteers set outfor home afier battles, thinking that the war was over or claiming that crops had to be harvested, D y p ' t g t h e eight years o f r y ~ ~ a n ~ ~ i t ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ p o ~ ~ , o , r n & ~ ~ ~ i ~

?h( f&@idrn&;~~? & btr,Gerr ,W&YAI $,P wi*f @&a RM- ington haye m ~ ? f ~ ( t p p - l & $ ~ g ~ pg8~.( & ( h g J S n l U t the same time, he was beset

' '3)l "cl;ronic shortages of money, guns, and supplies. Still, despite the odds, the American rebelsfought on with grim determination, because the distant goal of jeedom - a powerfirl and appealing ideal - was far preferable to a return to the status quo.

T h e British had even more agonizing ~ r o b l e m s than the Americans had. As

Richard M. Ketchum, a noted histonan of the Revolution, points out in the gracefirl account thatfollows, England's political and military leaders were arro-

gantly optimistic at the start of hostilities, certain that the upstart colonials could be smashed in a single, overwhelming blow. Shunning any effort at conciliation,

the king and the ministry of Lord North committed themselves to a war in a

savage wilderness 3,000 miles j o m home. For the British, it was a calamity. Plagued with insurmountable logistical problems, Britjsb t r ~ o p s (including Ger-

man mercenaries) sufleredfi.om supply shortages, low morale, and inept leader-

ship, Moreover, the "colonial war" became increasingly unpopular back home,

with many of England's leading politicians - and some of her generals as well - advocating colonial independence. A s the Americansfought doggedly on, the British simply lost the will tojight. Overconfident, blundering, and indecisive by turns, the British government, Ketchum suggests, helped ensure the ultimate

American victory.

LUTION], was the greatest' empire since Rome. Never before had she known such wealth and power; never had the future seemed so bright, the prospects so glowing. All, that is, except the spreading sore of discontent in the American c01- onies that, after festering for a decade and more, finally erupted in violence at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. When news of the subsequent battle for Bunker Hill reached Eng- land that summer, George 111 and his ministers concluded that there was no alternative to using force to put down the insurrection. In the King's mind, at least, there was no longer any hope o f reconciliation - nor did the idea appeal to him.

Was determined to teach the rebellious colo- n i a l ~ 8 lesson, and n o doubts troubled him as to

from '%n~fahd's Vietnam" by Richard M. Ketchurn. 0 '971 American Heritage Publlshlng C o . , Inc Reprinted by pernlission fromi American Heritage (June 1 9 ~ ~ )

the righteousness of the course he had chosen. "I a m not sorry that the line of conduct seems now chalked out," he had said even before fighting began; later he told his prime minister, Lord North, "I know I am doing my Duty and I can never wish to retract." And then, malung accep- tance of the war a matter of personal loyalty. "I wish nothing but good," he said, "therefore any- one who does nQt agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.", Filled with high moral purpose and confidence, he was certain that "when once these rebels have felt a smart blow, they will submit. . . ."

In British political and military circles there was a general agreement that the war would be quickly and easily won. "Shall we be told," asked one of the King's men in Commons, "that (the Americans) can resist the powerful efforts of this nation?" Major John Pitcairn, writing home from Boston in March, 1775, said, "I am satisfied that one active campaign, a smart action, and burning two or three of their towns, will set

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everything to rights." The man who would di- rect the British navy during seven years of war, the unprincipled, inefficient Earl of Sandwich, rose in the House of Lords to express his opinion of the provincial fighting man. "Suppose the Colonies do abound in men," the First Lord of the Admiralty asked, "what does that signify? They are raw, undisciplined, cowardly men. I wish instead o f forty o r fifty thousand of these brave fellows they would produce in the field at least two hundred thousand; the more the better, the easier would be the conquest; if they did not run away, they would starve themselves into compliance with our measures. . . ." And Gen- eral James Murray, who had succeeded the great Wolfe in 1749 as commander in North America, called the native American "a very effeminate thing, very unfit for and very impatient of war." Between these estimates of the colonial militia- man and a belief that the might of Great Britain was invincible, there was a kind of arrogant op- timism in official quarters when the conflict be- gan. "As there is not common sense in protract- ing a war of this sort," wrote Lord George Germain, the secretary for the American colo- nies, in September, 1775, "1 should be for exert- ing the utmost force of this Kingdom to finish the rebellion in one campaign."

Optimism bred more optimism, arrogance more arrogance. One armchair strategist in the House of Commons, William Innes, outlined for the other members an elaborate scheme he had devised for the conduct of the war. First, he would remove the British troops from Boston, since that place was poorly situated for defense. Then, while the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were treated like the madmen they were and shut up by the navy, the army would move to one of the southern colonies, fortify itself in an impregnable position, and let the provincials attack if they pleased. The British could sally forth from this and other defensive enclaves at

will, and eventually "success against one-half o f America will pave the way to the conquest of the whole. . . ." What was more, Innes went on, it was "more than probable you may find men to recruit your army in America." There was a good possibility, in other words, that the British regulars would be replaced after a while by Americans who were loyal to their king, so that the army fighting the rebels would be Amecican- ized, so to speak, and the Irish and English lads sent home. General James Robertson also be- lieved that success lay in this scheme of Ameri- canizing the combat force: "I never had an idea of subduing the Americans," he said, "I meant to assist the good Americans to subdue the bad."

This notion was important not only from the standpoint of the fighting, but in terms of ad- ministering the colonies once they were beaten; loyalists would take over the reins of govern- ment when the British pulled out, and Ioyalist militiamen would preserve order in the pacified colonies. N o one knew, of course, how many "good" Americans there were; some thought they might make up half or more o f the popula- tion. Shortly after arriving in the colonies in 1775, General William Howe, for one, was con- vinced that "the insurgents are very few, in com- parison with the whole of the people."

Before taking the final steps into full-scale war, however, the King and his ministers had to be certain about one vitally important matter: they had to be able to count on the support of the English people. O n several occasions in 1775 they were able t o read the public pulse (that part of it, at least, that mattered) by observing certain important votes in Parliament. The King's ad- dress to both Houses on October 26, in which he announced plans to suppress the uprising in America, was followed by weeks of angry de- bate; but when the votes were counted, the North ministry's majority was overwhelming. Each vote indicated the full tide of anger that

" W H E N I N T H E C O U R S E OF H U M A N E V E N T S . . ."

T h e conciliatory advice o f wise Parliamentarians like Burke

and Pitt could not prevail over the w a r party headed b y

George 111 and his political cronies. In this prophetic cartoon j o m a British magazine o f 1774, the spark of American re-

bellion seems destined to become an unquenchable b l a z e .

(Trustees o f the British M u s e u m )

influenced the independent members, the coun- try gentlemen who agreed that the colonials must be put in their place and taught a lesson. A bit out of touch with the news, highly princi- pled, and content in the belief that the King and the ministry must be right, none of them seem to have asked what would be best for the empire; they simply went along with the vindictive meas- ures that were being set in motion. Eloquent

voices - those of Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, ;he Earl of Chatham, John Wilkes, among others - were raised in opposition to the policies of the Crown, but as Burke said, ". . . it was almost in vain to contend, for the country gentlemen had abandoned their duty, and placed an implicit confidence in the Minister."

The words o f sanity and moderation went un- heeded because the men who spoke them were out of power and out of public favor; and each time the votes were tallied, the strong, silent, un- questioning majority prevailed. N o one in any position in power in the government proposed, after the Battle of Bunker Hill, to halt the fight- ing in order to settle the differences; no one se- riously contemplated conversations that might have led to peace. Instead the government - like so many governments before and since - took what appeared to be the easy way out and settled for war.

George 111 was determined to maintain his em- pire, intact and undiminished, and his greatest fear was that the loss of the American colonies would set off a reaction like a line of dominoes falling. Writing to Lord North in 1779, he called the contest with America "thenmost serious in which any country was ever engaged. It contains such a train of consequences that they must be examined to feel its real weight. . . . Independ- ence is [the Americans'] object, which every man not willing to sacrifice every object to a momen- tary and inglorious peace must concurr with me in thinking this country can never submit to. Should America succeed in that, the West Indies must follow, not in independence, but for their own interest they must become dependent on America. Ireland would soon follow, and this is- land reduced to itself, would be a poor island indeed."

Despite George's unalterable determination, strengthened by his domino theory; despite the wealth and might of the British empire; despite

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all the odds favoring a quick triumph, the prob- lems facing the King and his ministers and the - - armed forces were formidable ones indeed. Sur- passing all others in sheer magnitude was the im- mense distance between the mother country and the rebellious colonies. As Edmund Burke de- scribed the situation in his last, most eloquent appeal for conciliation, "Three thousand miles of - - ocean lie between you and them. N o contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weak- ening government. Seas roll, and months pass, - - between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation o f a single point is enough to defeat a whole system." Often the westerly passage took three months, and every soldier, every weapon, every button and gaiter and musket -ball, &ery article .of clothing and great quantities of food and even fuel, had to be shipped across those three thousand miles of the Atlantic. It was not only immensely costly and time consuming, but there was a terrifying wastefulness to it. Ships sank or were blown hundreds o f miles off course, supplies spoiled, animals died en route. Worse yet, men died, and in substantial numbers: returns from regiments sent from the British Isles to the West Indies be- tweenY7?6 and 1 ~ 8 G v e a l that an averape of I I per cent of the troops was lost on these crossings. 6

Beyond the water lay the North American land mass, and it was an article of faith on the part of many a British military man that certain ruin lay in fighting an enemy on any large scale in that savage wilderness. In the House of Lords in November, 1775, the Duke of Richmond warned the peers to consult their geographies be- fore turning their backs on a peaceful settlement. There was, he said, "one insuperable diniculty with which an army would have to struggle" -

- America abounded in vast rivers that provided : natural barriers to the progress of troops; it was

a country in which every bush might conceal an enemy, a land whose cultivated parts would be

laid waste, so that "the army (if any army could march or subsist) would be obliged to draw all its provisions from Europe, and all its fresh meat from Smithfield market." T h e French, the mortal enemies of Great Britain, who had seen a good deal more of the North American wilds than the English had, were already laying plans t o capi- talize on the situation when the British army was bogged down there. In Paris, watchfully eyeing his adversary's every move, France's foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, predicted in July, 1775, that "it will be vain for the English to multiply their forces" in the colonies; "no longer can they bring that vast continent back t o de- pendence by force of arms." Seven years later, as the war drew to a close, one o f Rochambeau's aides told a friend of Charles James Fox: " N o opinion was clearer than that though the people of America might be conquered by well disci- plined European troops, the country of America was unconquerable."

Yet even in 177s some thoughtful Englishmen doubted if the American people or their army could be defeated. Before the news of Bunker Hill arrived in London, the adjutant general de- clared that a plan to defeat the colonials militarily was "as wild an idea as ever controverted com- mon sense," and the secretary-of-war, Lord Bar- rington, had similar reservations. As early as 1774 Barrington ventured the opinion that a war in the wilderness of North America would cost Britain far more than she could ever gain from it; that the size of the country and the colonials' familiarity with firearms would make victory questionable - or at best achievable only at the cost of enormous suffering; and finally, even if Britain should win such a contest, Barrington believed that the cost of maintaining the colonies in any state of subjection would be staggering. John Wilkes, taunting Lord North on this matter of military conquest, suggested that North - even if he rode out at the head of the entire .

" W H E N IN THE C O U R S E OF H U M A N EVENTS

English cavalry - would not venture ten miles into the countryside for fear of guerrilla fighters. "The Americans," Wilkes promised, "will dis- pute every inch of territory with you, every nar- row pass, every strong defile, every Thermopy- lae, every Bunker's Hill."

It was left to the great William Pitt t o provide the most stirring warning against fighting the Americans. Now Earl of Chatham, he was so crippled in mind and body that he rarely ap- peared in the House of Lords, but in May, 1777, he made the supreme effort, determined to raise his voice once again in behalf of conciliation. Supported on canes, his eyes flashing with the old fire and his beak-like face thrust forward bel- ligerently, he warned the peers: "You cannot conquer the Americans. You talk of your nu- merous friends to annihilate the Congress, and of your powerful forces to disperse their army, but I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch. . . . You have been three years teaching them the art of war, and they are apt scholars. I will venture to tell your lordships that the American gentry will make officers enough fit to command the troops of all the European powers. What you have sent there are too many to make peace, too few to make war. You cannot make them respect you. You cannot make them wear your cloth. You will plant an invincible hatred in their breast against you. . . ."

"My lords," he went on, "you have been the aggressors from the beginning. I say again, this country has been the aggressor. You have made descents upon their coasts. You have burnt their towns, plundered their country, made war upon the inhabitants, confiscated their property, pro- scribed and imprisoned their persons. . . . The people o f America look upon Parliament as the authors of their miseries. Their affections are es- tranged from their sovereign. Let, then, repara- tion come from the hands that inflicted the inju-

ries. Let conciliation succeed chastisement. . . ." But there was no persuading the majority; Chatham's appeal was rejected and the war went on unabated.

It began to appear, however, that destruction of the Continental Army - even if that goal could be achieved - might not be conclusive. After the disastrous campaign around Manhattan in 1776, George Washington had determined not to risk his army in a major engagement, and he began moving away from the European battle style in which two armies confronted each other head to head. His tactical method became that of the small, outweighed prizefighter who depends on his legs to keep him out of range of his op- ponent and who, when the bigger man begins to tire, darts in quickly to throw a quick punch, then retreats again. It was an approach to fighting described by Nathanael Greene, writing of the campaign in the South in 1780: "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." In fact, between Jan- uary and September of the following year, Greene, short of money, troops, and supplies, won a major campaign without ever really win- ning a battle. The battle at Guilford Courthouse, which was won by the British, was typical of the results. As Horace Walpole observed, "Lord Cornwallis has conquered his troops out o f shoes and provisions and himself out of troops."

There was, in the colonies, no great political center like Paris o r London, whose loss might have been demoralizing to the Americans; in- deed, Boston, N e w York, and Philadelphia, the seat of government, were all held at one time or another by the British without irreparable dam- age to the rebel cause. The fragmented political and military structure of the colonies was often a help to the rebels, rather than a hindrance, for it meant that there was almost no chance of the en- emy striking a single crushing blow. The diffi- culty, as General Frederick Haldimand, who suc-

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ceeded Carleton in Canada, saw it, was the seemingly unending availability of colonial mi- litiamen who rose up out of nowhere to fight in support o f the nucleus of regular troops called the Continental Army. "It is not the number of troops Mr. Washington can spare from his army that is to be apprehended," Haldimand wrote, "it is the multitude of militia and men in arms ready to turn out at an hour's notice at the shew of a single regiment of Continental Troops. . . ." So long as the British were able to split up their forces and fan out over the countryside in rela- tively small units, they were fairly successful in putting down the irregulars' activities and cut- ting off their supplies; but the moment they had to concentrate again to fight the Continentals, guerrilla warfare burst out like so many small brush fires on their flank and rear. N o British regular could tell if an American was friend or foe, for loyalty to King George was easy to at- test; and the man who was a farmer or merchant when a British battalion marched by his home was a militiaman as soon as it had passed by, ready to shoulder his musket when an emer- gency or an opportunity to confound the enemy arose.

Against an unnumberable supply of irregular forces the British could bring to bear only a fixed quantity o f troops - however many, that is, they happened to have on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean at any given moment. Early in the war General James Murray had foreseen the difficulties that would undoubtedly arise. Writ- ing to Lord Barrington, he warned that military conquest was no real answer. If the war proved to be a long one, their advantage in numbers would heavily favor the rebels, who could re- place their losses while the British could not. Not only did every musket and grain of powder have to be shipped across the ocean; but if a man was killed or wounded, the only way to replace him

was to send another man in full kit acros. -- Atlantic. And troop transports were slow and small: three o r four were required to move a sin- gle battalion.

During the summer o f 1775 recruiting went badly in England and Ireland, for the war was not popular with a lot of the people w h o would have to fight it, and there were jobs t o be had. It was evident that the only means of assembling a force large enough to suppress the rebellion in the one massive stroke that had been determined upon was to hire foreign troops. And immedi- ately this word was out, the rapacious petty princes of Brunswick, Hesse-Cassel, and Wal- deck, and the Margrave of Anspach-Bayreuth, generously offered up a number of their subjects -at a price - fully equipped and ready for duty, to serve His Majesty George 111. Frederick the Great of Prussia, seeing the plan for what it was, announced that he would "make all the Hessian troops, marching through his dominions to America, pay the usual cattle tax, because, al- though human beings, they had been sold as beasts." But George 111 and the princes regarded it as a business deal, in the manner o f such du- bious alliances ever since: each foot soldier and trooper supplied by the Duke of Brunswick, for instance, was to be worth seven pounds, four shillings, fourpence halfpenny in levy money t o his Most Serene Highness. Three wounded men were to count as one killed in action, and it was stipulated that a soldier killed in combat would be paid for at the same rate as levy money. In other words the life of a subject was worth pre- cisely seven pounds, four shillings, fourpence halfpenny to the Duke.

As it turned out, the large army that was as- sembled in 1776 to strike a quick, overpowering blow that would put a sudden end to the rebel- lion proved - when that decisive victory never came to pass - to be a distinct liability, a

W H E N IN T H E C O U R S E O F H U M A N E V E N T S . . ."

hideously expensive and at times vulnerable weapon. In the indecisive hands of men like Wil- liam H o w e and Henry Clinton, who never seemed absolutely certain about what they should d o or how they should do it, the great army rarely had an opportunity to realize its po- tential; yet, it remained a ponderous and insatia- ble consumer o f supplies, food, and money.

The loyalists, on whom many Englishmen had placed such high hopes, proved a will-0'-the- wisp. Largely ignored by the policy makers early in the war despite their pleas for assistance, the loyalists were numerous enough but were neither well organized nor evenly distributed through- out the colonies. Where the optimists in Britain went wrong in thinking that loyalist strength would be an important factor was to imagine that anything like a majority of Americans could remain loyal to the Crown if they were not con- tinuously supported and sustained by the mother country. Especially as the war went on, as opin- ions hardened, and as the possibility increased that the new government in America might ac- tually survive, it was a very difficult matter to retain one's loyalty t o the King unless friends and neighbors were of like mind and unless there was Brltish force nearby to safepard such a belief. Furthermore, it proved almost impossible for the British command to satisfy the loyalists, who were bitterly angry over the persecution and physical violence and robbery they had to endure and who charged constantly that the British gen- erals were too lax in their treatment of rebels.

While the problems o f fighting the war in dis- tant America mounted, Britain found herself un- happily confronted with the combination of cir- cumstances the Foreign Office dreaded most: with her armies tied down, the great European maritime powers - France and Spain - venge- ful and adventurous and undistracted by war in the Old World, formed a coalition against her. When the American war began, the risk of for-

eign intervention was regarded as minimal, and the decision to fight was made on the premise that victory would be early and complete and that the armed forces would be released before any threatening European power could take ad- vantage of the situation. But as the war contin- ued without any definite signs of American col- lapse, France and Spain seized the chance to embarrass and perhaps humiliate their old antag- onist. At first they supported the rebels surrep- titiously with shipments of weapons and other supplies; then, when the situation appeared more auspicious, France in particular furnished active support in the form of an army and a navy, with catastrophic results for Great Britain.

One fascinating might-have-been is what would have happened had the Opposition in Par- liament been more powerful politically. It con- sisted, after all, of some of the most forceful and eloquent orators imaginable, men whose words still have the power to send shivers up the spine. Not simply vocal, they were highly intelligent men whose concern went beyond the injustice and inhumanity of war. They were quick to see that the personal liberty of the King's subjects was as much an issue in London ,as it was in the colonies, and they foresaw irreparable damage to the empire if the government followed its un- thinking policy of coercion. Given a stronger power base, they might have headed off war or the ultimate disaster; had the government been in the hands of men like Chatham or Burke or their followers, some accommodation with America might conceivably have evolved from the various proposals for reconciliation. But the King and North had the votes in their pockets, and the antiwar Opposition failed because a ma- jority that was largely indifferent to reason sup- ported the North ministry until the bitter end came with Cornwallis' surrender. Time and again a member of the Opposition would rise to speak out against the war for one reason or an-

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other: "This country," the Earl of Shelburne pro- tested, "already burdened much beyond lts abil- ities, is now on the eve of groaning under new taxes, for the purpose of carrying on this cruel and destructive war." Or, from Dr. Franklin's friend David Hartley: "Every proposition for reconciliation has so constantly and uniformly been crushed by Administration, that I think they seem not even to wish for the appearance of justice. The law of force is that which they appeal to. . . ." Or, from Sir James Lowther, when he learned that the King had rejected an "Olive Branch Petition" from the provincials: "Why have we not peace with a people who, it is evi- dent, desire peace with us?" O r this, from Gen- eral Henry Seymour Conway, inviting Lord North to inform members of the House o f Com- mons about his overall program: "I do not desire the detail; let us have general outline, to be able to judge of the probability of its success. It is in- decent not to lay before the House some plan, or the outlines of a plan. . . . If [the] plan is concil- iation, let us see it, that we may form some opin- ion of it; if it be hostility and coercion, I do re- peat, that we have no cause for a minute's consideration; for I can with confidence pro- nounce, that the present military armament will never succeed." But all unavailing, year after year, as each appeal to reason and humanity fell on ears deafened by self-righteousness and minds hardened against change.

Although it might be said that the arguments raised by the Opposition did not change the course o f the war, they nevertheless affected the manner in which it was conducted, which in turn led to the ultimate British defeat. Whether Lord North was uncertain of that silent majority's loy- alty is difficult t o determine, but it seems clear that he was sufficiently nervous about public ;upport to decide that a bold policy which risked lefeats was not for him. As a result the war of .he American Revolution was a limited war -

limited from the standpoint of its objectives and the force with which Britain waged it.

In some respects the aspect of the struggle that may have had the greatest influence on the out- come was an intangible one. Until the outbreak of hostilities in 1775 no more than a small mi- nority of the colonials had seriously contem- plated independence, but after a year of war the situation was radically different. N o w the mood was reflected in words such as these - instruc- tions prepared by the county of Buckingham, in Virginia, for its delegates to a General Conven- tion in Williamsburg: ". . . as far as your voices are admitted, you [will] cause a free and happy Constitution to be established, with a renuncia- tion of the old, and so much thereof as has been found inconvenient and oppressive." That simple and powerful idea - renunciation of the old and its replacement with something new, indepen- dently conceived - was destined to sweep all obstacles before it. In Boston, James Warren was writing the news of home to John Adams in Philadelphia and told him: "Your Declaration of Independence came on Saturday and diffused a general joy. Every one of us feels more important than ever; we now congratulate each other as Freemen." Such winds of change were strong, and by contrast all Britain had to offer was a re- turn to the status quo. Indeed, it was difficult for the average Englishman to comprehend the ap- peal that personal freedom and independence held for a growing number of Americans. As William Innes put it in a debate in Commons, all the government had to do to put an end to the nonsense in the colonies was to "convince the lower class o f those infatuated people that the imaginary liberty they are so eagerly pursuing is not by any means to be compared to that which the Constitution of this happy country already permits them t o enjoy."

With everything to gain from victory and everything to lose by defeat, the Americans

" W H E N I N T H E C O U R S E OF H U M A N E V E N T S . .

could follow Livy's advice, that "in desperate matters the boldest counsels are the safest." Fre- quently beaten and disheartened, inadequately trained and fed and clothed, they fought on against unreasonably long odds because of that slim hope of attaining a distant goal. And as they fought on, increasing with each passing year the possibility that independence might be achieved, the people o f Britain finally lost the will to keep going.

In England the goal had not been high enough, while the cost was too high. There was nothing compelling about the limited objective of bring- ing the colonies back into the empire, nothing inspiring about punishing the rebels, nothing no- ble in proving that retribution awaited those who would change the nature o f things.

After the war had been lost and the treaty of peace signed [in 17831, Lord North looked back o n the whole affair and sadly informed the mem- bers of the House of Commons where, in his opinion, the fault lay. . . . "The American war," he said, "has been suggested to have been the war of the Crown, contrary to the wishes of the peo- ple. I deny it. It was the war of Parliament. There was not a step taken in it that had not the sanc- tion o f Parliament. It was the war of the people, for it was undertaken for the express purpose of maintaining the just rights o f Parliament, or, in other words, o f the people of Great Britain, over the dependencies of the empire. For this reason, it was popular at its commencement, and eagerly

embraced by the people and Parliament. . . . Nor did it ever cease to be popular until a series of unparalleled disasters and calamities caused the people, wearied out with almost uninter- rupted ill-success and misfortune, to call out as loudly for peace as they had formerly do.ne for war."

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

I Examine the role of King George 111 in the British decision to use military force to put down the rebellion in the American colonies. What are the implications o f basing foreign policy on the question of personal loyalty? 2 What was the importance of American loy- alists in British military plans? Was it realistic for the British to hope to use them as they did?

3 What did Charles James Fox mean when he said, "Though the people of America might be conquered . . . the country of America was unconquerable"?

4 Analyze the role played by England's antiwar protesters in Parliament. What arguments did men like Edmund Burke and William Pitt offer in opposition to England's military policy, and what effect did they have o n the conduct of the war?

5 H o w were George Washington's military tac- tics ~ e r f e c t l ~ designed to win the Revolutionary War without necessarily winning a single battle?