Saint Croix Courier, St. Stephen, NB
April 6, 1893
GLIMPSES OF THE PAST
Contributions to the History of Charlotte County and the Border Towns.
LXI – THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS.
[Rev. W. O. Raymond, M. A.]
8.- An Inglorious War and a Disgraceful Peace.
To conquer by force of arms a people of English blood, numbering between three and four millions, scattered along a seaboard of 1200 miles, was indeed a formidable task.
Upper Canada in the war of 1812, with the aid of a few hundred British troops, for three years battled the forces of the United States, more than ten times their number, though their territories were separated by a river only. In the late American civil war the Southern States for four years withstood the resolute onslaught of ‘the North,’ waging so desperate a war that with the assistance of one of the great European powers, such as France, they would probably have gained their independence.
England’s attempt to subdue the rebellion of 1776 was rendered more formidable by the difficulties of transportation. Had the Revolution been the rising en masse of the American people, it would soon have ended in the acknowledgement of their independence by the mother country. But it was far otherwise. The forces employed by England never exceeded 45,000 men, including the Provincial regiments; yet such was the half-heartedness of the American people in the strife that England, frequently on the verge of success, failed mainly through the inactivity and incapacity of her generals.
The main army of the Americans under Washington was seldom even equal to that opposed to him. Indeed the practice of short enlistments coupled with frequent desertions, at times reduced the forces of the Americans so greatly that their only safety lay in the ignorance of their enemies of the real state of affairs.
In the campaign of 1777, Gen. Howe’s slowness and mismanagement surprised even his enemies. A French officer in the American service, M. du Portail, wrote to the secretary of the war department in France:
It is not the good conduct of the Americans that enabled them to make a campaign sufficiently fortunate; it is the fault of the English. If the English, instead of making so many diversions of a trifling nature, had opposed Washington with 20,000 men, I do not well know what would have become of us. If the English had followed up the battle of Brandywine, Washington’s army would have been spoken of no more. General Howe has in all his operations acted with such slowness and timidity as to strike me with astonishment. An active, enterprising general with 30,000 men must reduce this country.
In December, 1779, Washington complained that his forces were ‘mouldering away daily,’ and expressed his astonishment that Sir Henry Clinton could ‘justify remaining inactive with a force so superior.’ Lord North, with quaint humor, once said,
I do not know whether our generals will frighten the enemy, but I know they frighten me whenever I think of them.
Some Americans have claimed that the hand of Providence was certainly with them in the contest; since on no other supposition is it possible to explain such incidents as Gage’s prodigal expenditure of human life at Bunker Hill, Howe’s repeated failure to profit by the weakness of his enemies or even to follow up his own successes, Clinton’s inactivity at critical periods, Cornwallis’s mistaken course in the Virginian campaign, and similar short-sightedness on the part of other commanders.
The ultimate failure of the British, however, was undoubtedly due to the aid afforded the revolted colonies, first by France, and subsequently by Spain and Holland.
It is not the purpose of this article to trace in detail the progress of the Revolutionary war, much less to consider its events from a military standpoint.
The surrender of Lord Cornwallis and his army to the combined French and American forces on the 19th October, 1781 was a fatal blow to the hopes hitherto entertained by the Loyalists of the final triumph of the British arms. The event produced a profound sensation both in England and America. It called forth the extremes of joy and sorrow. The situation is very well described by the Rev. T. Watson Smith in his interesting account of the Loyalists at Shelburne:
At Philadelphia, at midnight a watchman is said to have traversed the streets, shouting at intervals; “Past twelve o’clock and a fine morning. Cornwallis is taken!” It seemed as if the words would wake the very dead. Candles were lighted, windows were thrown up, figures in night robes and night caps bent eagerly out of the windows, and as half-clad citizens met each other in the streets they shouted, laughed, wept for very joy. In New York the effect was far otherwise. That city had been for five years an asylum for the friends of Britain from all the revolted colonies. During those years it had been gay with all the pomp and circumstance of war. To the vast crowd of Loyalists collected there, most of whom had hoped that absence from former homes would be but temporary, the surrender of Cornwallis seemed like the knell of doom-a doom all the more to be dreaded because undefined. The struggle had been long and severe. It had not been precisely a foreign or a civil war, but in it had been combined the features of both. On the battle fields of the Revolution neighbor often met neighbor, and brother even sometimes met brother. There had been much, too, that was not war, but merely the gratification of a desire for plunder or a spirit of revenge under pretence of war.
The length of the contest and the spirit manifested by the victors when their success was assured soon showed the Loyalists they had little to expect in the way of kindness at the hands of their adversaries. All they could depend upon was the favor of that country at whose call they had suffered the loss of all things, and it may be added that they did not appeal in vain.
The events of the American Revolution, however, redound neither to the honor of the ministry that controlled the management of England’s public affairs nor of the commander-in-chief of her forces; but, alas, the national humiliation was not so great in the untoward events of the war itself as in the inglorious treaty of peace which terminated the war. It is almost a wonder that sufficient British territory was retained in America to provide a home for the exiled Loyalists!
The chief negotiator on the English side was one Richard Oswald, a retired Scotch merchant. He was selected by Lord Shelburne, the colonial secretary, and by him recommended to Benjamin Franklin as a ‘pacifical man, and conversant in those negotiations which are most interesting to mankind.’ Franklin soon found Oswald most acceptable as a negotiator. The British cabinet unwisely thought it judicious to defer to Franklin’s personal liking for Oswald, and intrusted the latter with ample authority to arrange as soon as possible the details of the treaty. Oswald was a weak man to put against such an intellectual giant as Franklin. He was impressed with the idea that peace was absolutely necessary to England, he was ignorant of the country whose bounds were to be defined, and he was easily hum-bugged. The effect of Franklin’s informal conversations with Oswald actually led the latter to represent to the British ministry that ‘nothing could be clearer, more satisfactory and convincing’ than the arguments for ceding Canada to the United States. Franklin, Adams and John Jay were appointed to treat on behalf of America. It is said ‘a cordiality and regard’ marked the intercourse of the American commissioners with Oswald. They met at each other’s apartments, and frequently dined together.
The boundary on the north-eastern frontier was a matter of some discussion. At first the English commissioners claimed the whole of Maine, and in default of this to have either the Penobscot or Kennebec as their western limit. The influence of John Adams, who arrived, as he says, ‘at a lucky moment for the boundary of Massachusetts,’ caused the commissioners to admit that Maine had formerly been considered a part of Massachusetts; and the eastern boundary of Maine then became the subject of animated discussion. Oswald, in the first instance, yielded to the St. John; but his colleagues were less easily won over to American ideas, and after successively abandoning claims to the Kennebec and the Penobscot, finally stopped at the St. Croix. This north-eastern boundary was, however, so obscurely defined as to afford a very serious difficulty in later years.
Speaking in the House of Lords in 1782, Lord Townshend pertinently remarked, ‘why could not some one in Canada have been thought of for the business which Oswald was sent to negotiate.’ Oswald was, or appeared to be, ignorant how the country lay which he had been granting away.
When the news of the bounds assigned to the United States arrived in America, Luzerne, the French ambassador there, wrote that, ‘the northern boundary from Lake Superior to the sources of the Mississippi had surpassed all expectations. It gave the Americans four forts that they had found it impossible to capture.’
Regarding the surprise felt in Paris at the terms of the treaty, we have the testimony of the two chief negotiators on the side of France and Spain, viz., Vergennes and Reyneval. Vergennes wrote to Rayneval, Dec. 4, 1782, that the English had rather bought a peace than made one; that their concessions as regards the boundaries, the fisheries and the Loyalists exceeded anything that he had believed possible. What could have been their motive for what one might interpret as a kind of surrender, he wished Reyneval to discover, as he was in a better position to do so. Reyneval replied that the treaty seemed to him a dream.
The arrangement proposed by the court of France in 1782 would have extended the southern boundary of Canada, to the Ohio river, and fixed the Alleghany mountains as the western boundary of the United States.
It is impossible not to be struck with the skill, hardihood and good fortune that marked the American negotiations. Everything the United States could with any show of plausibility demand from England, they obtained; and much of what they obtained was granted them in direct opposition to the wishes of the two great powers by whose assistance they had triumphed.
In a subsequent debate in the House of Commons, Fox spoke of
the treaty as ‘the most disastrous and degrading peace that
the country had ever made.’