Part 1051

"The first Continental Congress enjoyed and deserved in a remarkable degree the respect and confidence of the country. The second Congress was composed of eminent men, and succeeded, for a time, to the honors and reputation of the first. But when it attempted to pass from discussion to organization, and to direct as well as to frame the machinery of administration, its delays and disputes and errors and contradictions and hesitations excited a well-founded distrust of its executive skill. Conscious of this distrust, it became jealous of its authority; and instead of endeavoring to regain, by correcting its errors, the ground which it had lost by committing them, it grew suspicious and exacting in proportion to the decay of its strength. And while this critical change in its relations to the country was taking place, important changes took place also in the materials of which it was composed,—some of its wisest members being removed by death, or imperative calls to other fields of duty, or by failing of re-election at the regular expiration of their terms of office. Among the first elements with which it was brought into collision were the newly organized governments of the States. The question of State rights, that unsolved problem of our history, begins almost with the beginning of the war. How abundant and active the materials of disunion were, and how difficult it was even for leading men to rise above them might be proved by numerous passages in the letters of Washington and Greene, if it were not still more evident from the conduct of the local legislatures. How far this spirit might have been counteracted or controlled if the policy of the Congress had been that policy of prompt decision and energetic action which, commanding respect at all times, commands in times of general danger general and implicit obedience, it is impossible to say. … Another element with which it was brought into immediate and constant relations was the army; and, unfortunately for both, these relations, from their very nature, brought into immediate and constant contrast the elements of opposition which they both contained, rather than the elements of harmonious action, which they also contained in an almost equal degree. If the Congress was composed of the representatives of the people, the army was composed in a large proportion of the constituents of the Congress. More than once also, during the course of the war, men who had done good work for their country as soldiers, withdrawing from their original field of action, did equally good service for her as statesmen. And more than once, too, men who had proved themselves wise and eloquent in counsel were found at the head of a regiment, or even in more subordinate positions in the army. … The real interest and the real object of the citizen in arms and of the citizen in the toga were still the same. But their point of view was different. The ever-present object of Congress was discussion as a means of organization. The ever-present object of the leaders of the army was decision as a means of action. Congress counted obstacles, weighed difficulties, balanced opposing advantages, eating and sleeping meanwhile and refreshing mind and body as nature bade. But while Congress was deliberating upon the best way of procuring meat, the army was often brought to the verge of starvation for the want of it. While Congress was discussing by a warm fire the most eligible method of providing the army with tents and blankets, half the army was sleeping on the snow without either blanket or tent. {3263} While Congress was framing elaborate resolutions, and drawing out and equipping regiments upon paper, officers in the field were standing disheartened before their thinned and disheartened ranks. … Errors of statesmanship, like errors of generalship, would easily have been forgiven and forgotten; for both statesmen and generals had still much to learn. Unfortunately, while the best generals strove earnestly to correct their errors by their experience, Congress, in too many things, clung obstinately to its errors, in spite of the most decisive experience. Those errors were twofold,—errors of policy and errors of principle,—the one tending to undermine the respect which, in the beginning, was felt for their wisdom; the other, to awaken a general distrust of their justice. The first year of the war demonstrated the danger of short enlistments and temporary levies. But more than half the second year was allowed to pass before it was decided to raise an army for the whole duration of the war. The first campaign demonstrated the necessity of providing by regularly organized departments for the food, clothing, and transportation of the army; but it was not till late in the second year that a board of war was organized; and not till later still that the Quartermaster-General and Commissary-General were allowed to devote themselves to their duty in camp, instead of waiting idly for orders at the door of Congress. All experience and the simplest reasoning showed the importance of strengthening the hands of their General by passing promptly all the acts needed for the conduct of an army in the field, or the support and instruction of an army in quarters; but, in spite of all experience and the plainest reason, Congress persisted in its unseasonable delays. … The policy of the Congress, in the organization and support of the army, was a policy of tergiversation and delay. No wonder that the army, leaders and all, should early lose their confidence in its wisdom! But the dissatisfaction did not end here. One of the earliest felt of the numerous wants of the army was the want of good officers. … To select them in the beginning from the mass of unproved candidates was impossible; but in the course of two campaigns, the characters and pretensions of men were well tried, the chaff thoroughly sifted, and what remained might be confidently accepted as sound. … It was evidently the policy of Congress to secure by all proper and reasonable inducements the services of such officers for the war. It was the duty of Congress, in its dealings with them, to remember that in becoming soldiers, and exposing themselves to the dangers and privations of a soldier's life, they adopted, with the ideas of subordination that lie at the basis of military discipline, the ideas of rank and grade which define and circumscribe that subordination. But Congress remembered nothing of this. It required of them the service of officers, but gave them a pay hardly sufficient to enable them to live like private soldiers. It demanded the present sacrifice of cold, hunger, hard service, and exposure to sickness, wounds, and death; and refused the prospective reward of half-pay or pension when sickness or wounds should have incapacitated them for further exertion, or death should have made their wives unprotected widows, and their children helpless orphans. Forgetting that pride is an essential element of the military character, and that self-respect is essential to a healthy and sustaining pride, it trifled with their claims to rank by the accepted rules of service, and claimed and exercised the power of dealing with commissions according to its own good pleasure."

_G. W. Greene, Life of Nathanael Greene, book 2, chapter 18 (volume 1)._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778-1779. Clark's conquest of the Northwest for Virginia, and its annexation to the district of Kentucky.

"Virginia … had more western enterprise than any other colony. In 1774 Dunmore's war gave her the 'back-lands,' into which her frontiersmen had been for some time pressing. Boone was a Carolinian, but Kentucky was a distinctively Virginia colony. In 1776 the Virginia legislature erected the County of Kentucky, and the next year a Virginia judge dispensed justice at Harrodsburg. Soon the colony was represented in the legislature of the parent state. While thus extending her jurisdiction over the region southwest of the Ohio, the Old Dominion did not forget the language of [her charter] of 1609, 'up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest.' George Rogers Clark, a Virginian who had made Kentucky his home, was endowed with something of the general's and statesman's grasp. While floating down the Ohio in 1776, being then 24 years of age, he conceived the conquest of the country beyond the river. … Clark says he had since the beginning of the war taken pains to make himself acquainted with the true situation of the Northwestern posts; and in 1777 he sent two young hunters to spy out the country more thoroughly, and especially to ascertain the sentiments of the 'habitants.' On the return of these hunters with an encouraging report, he went to Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia, where he enlisted Governor Patrick Henry and other leading minds in a secret expedition to the Illinois. Acting under a vaguely worded law, authorizing him to aid 'any expedition against their Western enemies,' Governor Henry gave Clark some vague public instructions, directing him to enlist, in any county of the commonwealth, seven companies of men who should act under his command as a militia, and also private instructions that were much more full and definite. … Both the public and private instructions are dated January 2, 1778. The governor also gave the young captain a small supply of money. Clark immediately re-crossed the mountains and began to recruit his command. … Overcoming as best he could the difficulties that environed him, he collected his feeble command at the Falls of the Ohio. On June 26, 1778, he began the descent of the river. Leaving the Ohio at Fort Massac, forty miles above its mouth, he began the march to Kaskaskia. This fell into his hands, July 5th, and Cahokia soon after, both without the loss of a single life. Clark found few Englishmen in these villages, and the French, who were weary of British rule, he had little difficulty in attaching to the American interest. Vincennes, soon after, surrendered to a mere proclamation, when there was not an American soldier within one hundred miles of the place. … Clark prevailed upon 100 men to re-enlist for eight months; he then filled up his companies with recruits from the villages, and sent an urgent call to Virginia for re-enforcements. The salutary influence of the invasion upon the Indians was felt at once; it 'began to spread among the nations even to the border of the lakes;' and in five weeks Clark settled a peace with ten or twelve different tribes. … {3264} And now Clark began really to feel the difficulties of his situation. Destitute of money, poorly supplied, commanding a small and widely scattered force, he had to meet and circumvent an active enemy who was determined to regain what he had lost. Governor Hamilton [the British governor at Detroit] projected a grand campaign against the French towns that had been captured and the small force that held them. The feeble issue was the capture, in December, 1778, of Vincennes, which was occupied by but two Americans. Clark, who was in the Illinois at the time of this disaster, at once put his little force in motion for the Wabash, knowing, he says, that if he did not take Hamilton, Hamilton would take him; and, February 25, 1779, at the end of a march of 250 miles, that ranks in peril and hardship with Arnold's winter march to Canada, he again captured the town, the fort, the governor, and his whole command. Hamilton was sent to Virginia a prisoner of war, where he was found guilty of treating American prisoners with cruelty, and of offering the Indians premiums for scalps, but none for prisoners." Clark was ambitious to extend his march to Detroit, but could not compass the necessary means. "'Detroit lost for a few hundred men,' was his pathetic lament as he surrendered an enterprise that lay near his heart. Had he been able to achieve it, he would have won and held the whole Northwest. As it was he won and held the Illinois and the Wabash in the name of Virginia and of the United States. The bearing of this conquest on the question of western boundaries will be considered in another place, but here it is pertinent to remark that the American Commissioners, in 1782, at Paris, could plead 'uti possidetis' in reference to much of the country beyond the Ohio, for the flag of the Republic, raised over it by George Rogers Clark, had never been lowered. It would not be easy to find in our history a case of an officer accomplishing results that were so great and far-reaching with so small a force. Clark's later life is little to his credit, but it should not be forgotten that he rendered the American cause and civilization a very great service. All this time the British were not idle. War-party after war-party was sent against the American border. In 1780 a grand expedition was organized at Detroit and sent to Kentucky under the command of Captain Bird. But it accomplished nothing commensurate with its magnitude and cost. … The Northwest had been won by a Virginia army, commanded by a Virginia officer, put in the field at Virginia's expense. Governor Henry had promptly announced the conquest to the Virginia delegates in Congress. … But before Patrick Henry wrote this letter, Virginia had welded the last link in her chain of title to the country beyond the Ohio. In October, 1778, her Legislature declared: 'All the citizens of the commonwealth of Virginia, who are actually settlers there, or who shall hereafter be settled, on the west side of the Ohio, shall be included in the district of Kentucky which shall be called Illinois County.' Nor was this all. Soon after, Governor Henry appointed a lieutenant-commandant for the new county, with full instructions for carrying on the government. The French settlements remained under Virginia jurisdiction until March, 1784."

_B. A. Hinsdale, The Old Northwest, chapter 9._

ALSO IN: _Clark's Campaign in the Illinois (Ohio Valley History Series, 3)._

_J. H. Perkins, Annals of the West, chapter 7._

_A. Davidson and B. Stuvé, History of Illinois, chapters 16-18._

_T. Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, volume 2, chapters 2-3._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778-1779. The French Alliance. Peril of France. Doubtful feeling in America. Spanish mediation with England.

"From the third volume of Doniol's comprehensive work on the 'Participation de la France a l'etablissement des Ètats Unis,' published in 1888, we are able to learn for the first time the extreme peril of France in 1778-1779. When Vergennes advised the recognition of the independence of the United States, it was on the same grounds that Canning advised the recognition of the independence of the Spanish South American States many years afterwards. The fair distribution of power in the civilized world, which was threatened in the latter period by the Holy Alliance, was threatened in the former period by the assumption of maritime supremacy by Britain. In each the object was to call up a new sovereignty in America, so as to check an undue concentration of sovereignty in Europe, Undoubtedly Vergennes was aided, as Canning was aided, by the enthusiasm felt by men of liberal views for a revolution that was expected to extend the domain of liberalism; but with Vergennes, as with Canning, the object was the establishing of a power abroad which could resist a dangerous aggression at home. When in February, 1778, France acknowledged the independence of the United States, Vergennes had good reason to hold either that Britain would not resent the insult by war, or that she would find that in such a war the odds were against her. A British army had just capitulated at Saratoga. America, so it was reported to Vergennes and so he believed, was unanimous in determining to defend her liberties to the last. In Holland there was a strong party which was expected to force the States-General into a recognition of their sister republic. Spain had already secretly advanced a million of francs to the American commissioners. From Frederick the Great, delighted to see his British relatives, who had not always supported him in his troubles, annoyed by a revolt in their own domain, came words very encouraging to the American envoys. Catharine II listened with apparent satisfaction to a scheme which would relieve her infant shipping from British oppression. It looked as if, should Britain declare war against France, she would have against her the armies and navies of all continental Europe, aided by the people of her American Colonies in a compact mass. But in a few months there came a great change. The British army under Howe was so largely reenforced as for the immediate present to give it a great superiority over any army Congress could bring against it in open field. … It is true that the news in April of the French treaty revived the energies of the revolutionists; but this treaty had its drawbacks, as the old dislike of France, in part inherited from England, in part the product of the Seven-years war, intensified the yearning for the mother country which in many hearts still remained. French officers complained that on their first arrival in New England they were received with sullen aversion by the people, though welcomed by the revolutionary leaders. {3265} The French army and navy, for the first year in which they were engaged in America, did no good to the American cause; and so great was the popular irritation at their inactivity, so strong, it was said, continued to be the old race attachment to England, that intelligent French observers in America advised Vergennes that he must move warily, for at any moment America might make a separate peace with Britain and then join the British forces against France. No doubt these reports, so far as they pronounced this to be the drift of a large minority in Congress, were unfounded in fact. They were nevertheless communicated under high sanction to Vergennes, and produced in his mind the liveliest anxiety. … English influence had for a time regained its ascendency in Holland. Prussia and Russia, having tasted the delights of neutral commerce, let it be plainly understood that they would not abandon a neutrality so profitable for the risks of belligerency. And Spain had taken alarm and was backing out not merely from the family compact, but from her recent promise to aid the insurgents. Aiding the insurgents, her minister declared, would be cutting her own throat, and no aid to the insurgents should be given except on a very heavy equivalent. If France was to meet the shock of the British navy alone she might be swept from the seas, and, aside from this danger, her finances were in such a ruinous condition that her bankruptcy was imminent. One of two courses must be adopted, not only to save France but to save the independence of the United States and the consequent equipoise of power for which France has gone to war. There must be either a general peace, which would include the independence of the United States, or there must be war, with Spain joining the allies. … It was in this condition of affairs that the position of Spain in 1778-1779 became of commanding importance. She offered herself as mediator between the allies and their common enemy, and through her the terms of pacification were discussed. In the negotiations, protracted and on both sides largely insincere, between Spain and Britain relative to the proposed pacification, the winter of 1778-1779 was consumed."

_F. Wharton, Introduction to The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, chapter 5, section 86 (volume 1)._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778-1779. The War carried into the South. Savannah taken and Georgia subdued.