Control of the British ministry was now seized by the gifted but erratic
"Champagne Charley" Townshend, a man who could deliver brilliant speeches in
Parliament even while drunk. Rashly promising to pluck feathers from the
colonial goose with a minimum of squawking, he persuaded Parliament in 1767
to pass the Townshend Acts.

The most important of these new regulations was a light import duty on glass,
white lead, paper, and tea. Townshend, seizing on a dubious distinction between
internal and external taxes, made this tax, unlike the Stamp Act, an indirect
customs duty payable at American ports. But to the increasingly restless
colonials, this was a distinction without a difference. For them the real difficulty
remained taxes--in any form--without representation.

Flushed with their recent victory over the stamp tax, the colonists were in a
rebellious mood. The impost on tea was especially irksome, for an estimated 1
million people drank the refreshing brew twice a day, and even tipplers used it
when alcohol was not available.

The new Townshend revenues, worse yet, would be used to pay the salaries of
the royal governors and judges in America. From the standpoint of efficient
administration by London, this was a reform long overdue. But the
ultrasuspicious Americans, who had beaten the royal governors into line by
controlling the purse, regarded Townshend's tax as another attempt to enchain
them. Their worst fears took on greater reality when the London government,
after passing the Townshend taxes, suspended the legislature of New York in
1767 for failure to comply with the Quartering Act.

Non importation agreements, previously potent, were quickly revived against the
Townshend Acts. But they proved less effective than those devised against the
Stamp Act. The colonials, again enjoying prosperity, took the new tax less
seriously than might have been expected, largely because it was light and
indirect. They found, moreover, that they could secure smuggled tea at a cheap
price, and consequently smugglers increased their activities, especially in
Massachusetts.

British officials, faced with a breakdown of law and order, landed two regiments
of troops in Boston in 1768. Many of the soldiers were drunken and profane
characters. Liberty-loving colonials, resenting the presence of the red-coated
"ruffians," taunted the "bloody backs" unmercifully.

A clash was inevitable. On the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd of some sixty
townspeople set upon a squad of about ten "bloody backs," one of whom was hit
by a club and another of whom was knocked down. Acting apparently without
orders but under extreme provocation, the troops opened fire and killed or
wounded eleven "innocent" citizens. One of the first to die was Crispus Attucks,
described by contemporaries as a powerfully built runaway "mulatto" and as a
leader of the mob. Both sides were in some degree to blame, and in the
subsequent trial (in which future president John Adams served as defense
attorney for the soldiers) only two of the redcoats were found guilty of
manslaughter. The soldiers were released after being branded on the hand.

The so-called Boston Massacre further inflamed the colonials against the British,
especially after the conviction spread that the Americans had been wholly
unoffending. Paul Revere, the artist-horseman, wrote,

Unhappy Boston! see thy sons deplore
Thy hallowed walks besmear'd with guiltless gore.
Massacre Day was observed in Boston as a patriotic holiday until 1776, when
the more glorious Fourth of July eclipsed it."

By 1770 King George III, then only thirty-two years old, was strenuously
attempting to restore the declining power of the British monarchy. He was a good
man in his private morals, but he proved to be a bad ruler. Earnest, industrious,
stubborn, lustful for power, and later plagued with periodic fits of supposed
madness, he surrounded himself with cooperative "yes men," notably his
corpulent prime minister, Lord North.

The ill-timed Townshend Acts had failed to produce revenue, though producing
near-rebellion. Net proceeds from the tax in one year were £295, and during that
time the annual military costs to Britain in the colonies had mounted to
£170,000. Nonimportation agreements, though feebly enforced, were pinching
British manufacturers. The government of Lord North, bowing to various
pressures, finally persuaded Parliament to repeal the Townshend revenue
duties. But the three-pence tax on tea was retained to keep alive the principle of
parliamentary taxation.

Flames of discontent in America continued to be fanned by numerous incidents,
including the redoubled efforts of the British officials to enforce the Navigation
Laws. Resistance was further whipped up by a master propagandist and
engineer of rebellion, Samuel Adams of Boston, a cousin of John Adams.
Unimpressive in appearance (his hands trembled), he lived and breathed only
for politics. His friends had to buy him a presentable suit of clothes when he left
Massachusetts on intercolonial business. Zealous, tenacious, and courageous,
he was ultrasensitive to infractions of colonial rights. Cherishing a deep faith in
the common people, he appealed effectively to what was called his "trained
mob." Skillful also as a pamphleteer, he soon became known as the "Penman of
the Revolution."

Samuel Adams's signal contribution was to organize in Massachusetts the local
committees of correspondence. After he had formed the first one in Boston
during 1772, some eighty towns in the colony speedily set up similar
organizations. Their chief function was to spread propaganda and information
by interchanging letters and thus keep alive opposition to British policy. One
critic referred to the committees as "the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous
serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition." No more effective device for
stimulating resistance could have been contrived.

Intercolonial committees of correspondence were the next logical step. Virginia
led the way in 1773 by creating such a body as a standing committee of the
House of Burgesses. Within a short time, every colony had established a central
committee through which it could exchange ideas and information with other
colonies. These intercolonial groups, which were supremely significant in
stimulating and disseminating sentiment in favor of united action, evolved
directly into the first American congresses."

The American Pageant
Chapter 7.9
The Seditious Committees of Correspondence

Thus far--that is, by 1773--nothing had happened to make rebellion inevitable.
Nonimportation was weakening. Increasing numbers of colonials were
reluctantly paying the tea tax, because the legal tea was now cheaper than the
smuggled tea and cheaper than tea in England. Even John Adams on one
occasion hoped that the tea he was drinking was smuggled Dutch tea, but he
could not be sure and did not want to know.

A new ogre entered the picture in 1773. The powerful British East India
Company, overburdened with 17 million pounds of unsold tea, was facing
bankruptcy. If it collapsed, the London government would lose heavily in tax
revenue. The ministry therefore decided to assist the company by awarding it a
complete monopoly of the American tea business. The terms thus granted would
enable the giant corporation to sell the coveted leaves more cheaply than ever
before, even with the three-pence tax added. But to many American consumers,
principle was more important than price.

If British officials insisted on the letter of the law, violence would be inevitable,
for the new tea monopoly had many features that were abhorrent to the
colonials. Above all, it seemed like a shabby attempt to trick the Americans, with
the bait of cheaper tea, into accepting the detested tax. Fatefully, the British
colonial authorities decided to enforce the law literally, and once more the
colonials rose in their wrath. Not a single one of the several thousand chests of
tea shipped by the company reached the hands of the consignees. At Annapolis,
the Marylanders burned both the cargo and the vessel, while proclaiming
"Liberty and Independence or death in pursuit of it." At Boston, which was host
to the most famous tea party of all, a band of white townsfolk, disguised as
Indians, boarded the three tea ships on December 16, 1773. They smashed
open 342 chests and dumped the "cursed weed" into Boston harbor, while a
silent crowd watched approvingly from the wharves as salty tea was brewed for
the fish.

Reactions varied. Extremists in America rejoiced; conservatives shuddered. This
wanton destruction of private property was going too far. The British at home
were outraged; even friends of America hung their heads. Punishment and
coercion were the only possible responses of the London authorities, as long as
the mercantilist philosophy prevailed and the colonials refused to accept
responsibility.

The granting of some kind of home rule to the Americans might have prevented
rebellion, but not many Britons of that age were blessed with such vision.
Edmund Burke, the great conservative political theorist and a friend of America
in Parliament, stoically declared, "To tax and to please, no more than to love and
be wise, is not given to men.""

The American Pageant
Chapter 7.10
Tea Parties at Boston and Elsewhere

American dissenters, outraged by the Quebec Act, responded sympathetically to
the plight of Massachusetts. It had put itself in the wrong by the wanton
destruction of the tea cargoes; now England had put itself in the wrong by brutal
punishment that did not seem to fit the crime. Flags were flown at half-mast
throughout the colonies on the day that the Boston Port Act went into effect, and
sister colonies rallied to send food to the stricken city. Rice was shipped even
from faraway South Carolina.

Most memorable of the responses to the "Intolerable Acts" was the summoning
of a Continental Congress in 1774. It was to meet in Philadelphia to consider
ways of redressing colonial grievances.

Twelve of the thirteen colonies, with Georgia alone missing, sent fifty-five
distinguished men, among them Samuel Adams, John Adams, George
Washington, and Patrick Henry. Intercolonial frictions were partially melted away
by social activity after working hours; in fifty-four days George Washington
dined at his own lodgings only nine times.

The First Continental Congress deliberated for seven weeks, from September 5
to October 26, 1774. It was not a legislative but a consultative body; it was a
convention rather than a congress. John Adams played a stellar role. Eloquently
swaying his colleagues to a revolutionary course, he helped defeat by the
narrowest of margins a proposal by the moderates for a species of American
home rule under British direction. After prolonged argument the Congress drew
up several dignified papers. These included a ringing Declaration of Rights, as
well as solemn appeals to other British American colonies, to the king, and to the
British people.

The most significant action of the Congress was the creation of The Association.
Unlike previous nonimportation agreements, this one called for a complete
boycott of British goods; nonimportation, nonexportation, and nonconsumption.

A document known as The Association, by providing for concerted action, was
the closest approach to a written constitution that the colonies as a unit had yet
devised. But still there was no genuine drive toward independence--merely an
effort to bring about a repeal of the offensive legislation and a return to the
happy days before parliamentary taxation. If colonial grievances were redressed,
well and good; if not, the Congress was to meet again in May 1775.

But the deadly drift toward war continued. The petitions of the Continental
Congress were rejected, after considerable debate, by strong majorities in
Parliament. In America chickens squawked and tar kettles bubbled as violators
of The Association were tarred and feathered. Muskets were being collected,
men were openly drilling, and a clash seemed imminent.

In April 1775 the British commander in Boston sent a detachment of troops to
nearby Lexington and Concord. They were to seize stores of colonial gunpowder
and also to bag the "rebel" ringleaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. At
Lexington the colonial "Minute Men" refused to disperse rapidly enough, and
shots were fired that killed eight Americans and wounded several more. The
affair was more the "Lexington Massacre" than a battle. The redcoats pushed on
to Concord, whence they were forced to retreat by the homespun Americans,
whom Emerson immortalized:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Concord Hymn.")

The bewildered British, fighting off murderous fire from militiamen crouched
behind thick stone walls, finally regained the sanctuary of Boston. Licking their
wounds, they could count about three hundred casualties, including some
seventy killed. England now had a war on its hands."

The American Pageant
Chapter 7.12
The Continental Congress and Bloodshed
Aroused Americans had brashly rebelled against a mighty empire. The
population odds were about three to one against the rebels--some 7.5 million
Britons to 2.5 million colonials. The odds in monetary wealth and naval power
were overwhelmingly in favor of England.

Black people were only a partial asset to the American cause, for they could
hardly be expected to fight for a society that had enslaved them. Still, about five
thousand saw military service, whether as freemen or as slaves promised
freedom, and in a number of engagements fought bravely. Even larger numbers,
often guaranteed freedom with no strings attached, fled to enemy lines and left
the country when the British departed.

Britain then boasted a professional army of some fifty thousand men, as
compared with the numerous but wretchedly trained American militia. George III,
in addition, had the money to hire foreign soldiers, and some thirty thousand
Germans--so-called Hessians--were ultimately employed. The British enrolled
about fifty thousand American Loyalists and enlisted the services of many
Indians, who though unreliable fair-weather fighters, inflamed long stretches of
the frontier. One British officer boasted that the war would offer no problems
that could not be solved by an "experienced sheep herder."

Yet England was weaker than it seemed at first glance. Oppressed Ireland was a
latent volcano, and British troops had to be detached to watch it. France, bitter
from its recent defeat, was awaiting an opportunity to stab Britain in the back.
The London government was confused and inept. There was no William Pitt,
"Organizer of Victory," only the stubborn George III and his pliant Lord North.

Many earnest and God-fearing Britons had no desire whatever to kill their
American cousins. William Pitt withdrew a son from the army rather than see him
thrust his sword into fellow Anglo-Saxons struggling for liberty. The English
Whig factions, opposed to Lord North's Tory factions, openly cheered American
victories--at least at the outset.

Aside from trying to embarrass the Tories politically, many Whigs believed that
the battle for English freedom was being fought in America. If George III
triumphed, his rule at home might become tyrannical. This outspoken sympathy
in England, though plainly that of a minority, greatly encouraged the Americans.
If they continued their resistance long enough, the Whigs might come into
power and deal generously with them.

Britain's army in America had to operate under endless difficulties. The generals
were second-rate; the soldiers, though on the whole capable, were brutally
treated. There was one extreme case of eight hundred lashes on the bare back
for striking an officer. Provisions were often scarce, rancid, and wormy. On one
occasion a supply of biscuits, captured some fifteen years earlier from the
French, was softened by dropping cannonballs on them.

Other handicaps loomed. The redcoats had to conquer the Americans; a draw
would be a victory for the colonials. Britain was operating some 3,000 miles
(4,800 kilometers) from its home base, and distance added greatly to the delays
and uncertainties arising from storms and other mishaps. Military orders were
issued in London that, when received months later, would not fit the changing
situation.

America's geographical expanse was enormous: roughly 1,000 by 600 miles
(1,600 by 970 kilometers). The united colonies had no urban nerve center, like
France's Paris. British armies captured every city of any size, yet like a boxer
punching a feather pillow, they made little more than a dent in the entire
country. The Americans wisely traded space for time. Benjamin Franklin
calculated that during the prolonged campaign in which the redcoats captured
Bunker Hill and killed some 150 Yankees, about 60,000 American babies were
born."

The American Pageant
Chapter 7.13
Imperial Strength and Weakness

The clash of arms continued on a strangely contradictory basis. On the one
hand, the Americans were emphatically affirming their loyalty to the king and
earnestly voicing their desire to patch up existing difficulties. On the other hand,
they were raising armies and shooting down His Majesty's soldiers. This curious
war of inconsistency was fought for fourteen long months--from April 1775 to
July 1776--before the fateful plunge into independence was taken.

Gradually the tempo of warfare increased. In May 1775 a tiny American force,
under Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, surprised and captured the British
garrisons at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, on the scenic lakes of upper New
York. A priceless store of gunpowder and artillery for the siege of Boston was
thus secured. In June 1775 the colonials seized a hill, now known as Bunker Hill
(actually Breed's Hill), from which they menaced the enemy in Boston.

The British, instead of cutting off the retreat of their foes by flanking them,
blundered bloodily when they launched a frontal attack with three thousand men.
Sharpshooting Americans, numbering fifteen hundred and strongly entrenched,
mowed down the advancing foe with frightful slaughter. But the colonials' scanty
store of gunpowder finally gave out, and they were forced to abandon the hill in
disorder. With two more such victories, remarked the French foreign minister,
the British would have no army left in America.
Even at this late date, in July 1775, the Continental Congress adopted the
"Olive Branch Petition," professing American loyalty to the crown and begging
the king to prevent further hostilities. But following Bunker Hill, King George III
slammed the door on all hope of reconciliation. In August 1775 he formally
proclaimed the colonies in rebellion, with all that this implied in the way of future
hangings.

The next month he widened the chasm when he completed arrangements for
hiring thousands of German troops (so-called Hessians) to help crush his
rebellious subjects. Six German princes involved in the transaction needed the
money (one reputedly had seventy-four children); George III needed the men.

News of the Hessian deal shocked the colonials. The quarrel, they felt, was
within the family. Why bring in outside mercenaries, especially foreigners who
had an exaggerated reputation for butchery and bestiality?

Hessian hirelings proved to be good soldiers in a mechanical sense, but many of
them were more interested in booty than in duty. For good reason they were
dubbed "Hessian flies." Seduced by American promises of land, hundreds of
them finally deserted and remained in America to become respected citizens."

The American Pageant
Chapter 8.2
Bunker Hill and Hessian Hirelings

The unsheathed sword continued to take its toll. In October 1775, on the eve of
a cruel winter, the British burned Falmouth (Portland), Maine. In that same
autumn the rebels daringly undertook a two-pronged invasion of Canada.
American leaders believed, erroneously, that the conquered French were
explosively restive under the British yoke.

A successful assault on Canada would add a fourteenth colony, while depriving
Britain of a valuable base for striking at the colonies in revolt. But this large-
scale attack, involving some two thousand American troops, contradicted the
claim of the colonials that they were merely fighting defensively for a redress of
grievances. Invasion northward was undisguised offensive warfare.

This bold stroke for Canada narrowly missed success. One invading column
under the Irish-born General Richard Montgomery, formerly of the British army,
pushed up the Lake Champlain route and captured Montreal. He was joined at
Quebec by the bedraggled army of General Benedict Arnold, whose men had
been reduced to eating dogs and shoe leather during their grueling march
through the Maine woods.

An assault on Quebec, launched on the last day of 1775, was beaten off. The
able Montgomery was killed; the dashing Arnold was wounded in one leg.
Scattered remnants under his command retreated up the St. Lawrence River,
reversing the way Montgomery had come. French-Canadian leaders, who had
been generously treated by the British in the Quebec Act of 1774, showed no
real desire to welcome the plundering anti-Catholic invaders.

Bitter fighting continued in the colonies, though the Americans still disclaimed all
desire for independence. In January 1776 the British set fire to the Virginia town
of Norfolk. In March they were finally forced to evacuate Boston, taking with
them the leading friends of the king. (Evacuation Day is still celebrated annually
in Boston.) In the South the rebellious colonials won two victories in 1776--one
in February against some fifteen hundred Loyalists at Moore's Creek Bridge, in
North Carolina, and the other in June against an invading British fleet at
Charleston Harbor."

The American Pageant
Chapter 8.3
The Abortive Conquest of Canada

Why did Americans continue to deny any intention of independence? Loyalty to
the empire was deeply ingrained; colonial unity was poor; and open rebellion
was dangerous, especially against a formidable Britain. Irish rebels of that day
were customarily hanged, drawn, and quartered. American rebels might have
fared no better.

As late as January 1776--five months before independence was declared--the
king's health was being toasted by the officers of Washington's mess near
Boston. "God save the king" had not yet been replaced by "God save the
Congress."

Gradually the Americans were shocked into an awareness of their
inconsistency. Their eyes were jolted open by harsh British acts like the burning
of Falmouth and Norfolk, and especially by the hiring of the Hessians.

Then in 1776 came the publication of Common Sense, one of the most influential
pamphlets ever written. Its author was the radical Thomas Paine, once an
impoverished corset-maker's apprentice, who had come over from England a
year earlier. His tract became a whirlwind best-seller and within a few months
reached the astonishing total of 120,000 copies.

Paine flatly branded the shilly-shallying of the colonials as contrary to "common
sense." Why not throw off the cloak of inconsistency? Nowhere in the physical
universe did the smaller heavenly body control the larger one. Then why should
the tiny island of England control the vast continent of America? As for the king,
whom the Americans professed to revere, he was nothing but "the Royal Brute of
Great Britain." America had a sacred mission--a moral obligation to the world--to
set itself up as an independent, democratic republic, untainted by association
with corrupt and monarchical Britain.

Paine's passionate protest was eloquent and radical--even doubly radical. It
called not simply for independence, but for republicanism. Paine thus penned
both persuasive propaganda and potent political theory. He helped thousands of
American waverers, hesitant to break with Britain, to see that their cause
embraced both self-determination and democracy.

He also forcefully reminded them that they could not hope for open aid from
France as long as they swore allegiance to the British king. The French crown
was interested in destroying the British empire, not in helping to reconstruct it
under a plan of reconciliation."

The American Pageant
Chapter 8.4
Thomas Paine Preaches Common Sense

Members of the Philadelphia Congress, instructed by their respective colonies,
gradually edged toward a clean break. On June 7, 1776, fiery Richard Henry Lee
of Virginia moved that "These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free
and independent states. ..." After considerable debate, the motion was adopted
nearly a month later, on July 2, 1776.

The passing of Lee's resolution was the formal "declaration" of independence by
the American colonies, and technically this was all that was needed to cut the
British tie. John Adams wrote confidently that ever thereafter July 2 would be
celebrated annually with fireworks.

But something more was required. An epochal rupture of this kind called for
some formal explanation to "a candid world." An inspirational appeal was also
needed to enlist other English colonies in the Americas, to invite assistance
from foreign nations, and to rally resistance at home.

Shortly after Lee made his memorable motion on June 7, Congress appointed a
committee to prepare an appropriate statement. The task of drafting it fell to
Thomas Jefferson, a tall, freckled, sandy-haired Virginia lawyer of thirty-three.
Despite his youth, he was already recognized as a brilliant writer, and he
measured up splendidly to his opportunity.

After some debate and amendment, the Declaration of Independence was
formally approved by the Congress on July 4, 1776. It might better have been
called "the Explanation of Independence" or, as one contemporary described it,
"Mr. Jefferson's advertisement of Mr. Lee's resolution."

Jefferson's pronouncement, couched in a lofty style, was magnificent. He gave
his appeal universality by invoking the "natural rights" of humankind--not just
British rights. He argued persuasively that because the king had flouted these
rights, the colonials were justified in cutting their connection. He then set forth a
long list of the presumably tyrannous misdeeds of George III.

The overdrawn bill of indictment included imposing taxes without consent,
dispensing with trial by jury, abolishing valued laws, establishing a military
dictatorship, maintaining standing armies in peacetime, cutting off trade, burning
towns, hiring mercenaries, and inciting hostility among the Indians. (For an
annotated text of the Declaration of Independence, see the Appendix.)

Jefferson's withering blast was admittedly one-sided. But he was in effect the
prosecuting attorney, and he took certain liberties with historical truth. He was
not writing history; he was making it through what has been called "the world's
greatest editorial." He owned many slaves, and his affirmation that "all men are
created equal" was to haunt him and his fellow citizens for generations.

The formal declaration of independence cleared the air as a thundershower
does on a muggy day. Foreign aid could be solicited with greater hope of
success. Those patriots who defied the king were now rebels, not loving subjects
shooting their way into reconciliation. They must all hang together, Franklin is
said to have grimly remarked, or they would all hang separately. Or, in the
eloquent language of the great declaration, "We mutually pledge to each other
our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

Jefferson's defiant Declaration of Independence had a universal impact
unmatched by any other American document. This "shout heard round the world"
has been a source of inspiration to countless revolutionary movements against
arbitrary authority. Lafayette hung a copy on a wall in his home, leaving beside
it room for a future French Declaration of the Rights of Man--a declaration that
was officially born thirteen years later."

The American Pageant
Chapter 8.5
Jefferson's "Explanation" of Independence

One of the darkest periods of the war was 1780-1781, before the last decisive
victory. Inflation of the currency was continuing at full gallop. Not only was the
government virtually bankrupt, but Congress had been forced to repudiate its
financial obligations, in part, on a forty-to-one basis. Despair was prevalent;
disunion was increasing among the states; and mutiny over back pay was
spreading in the army.

Meanwhile, the British General Cornwallis was blundering into a trap. After futile
operations in Virginia, he had fallen back to Chesapeake Bay at Yorktown to
await seaborne supplies and reinforcements. He assumed Britain would
continue to control the sea. But these few fateful weeks happened to be one of
the brief periods during the war when British naval superiority slipped away.

The French were now prepared to cooperate energetically in a brilliant stroke.
Admiral de Grasse, operating with a powerful fleet in the West Indies, advised
the Americans that he was free to join with them in an assault on Cornwallis at
Yorktown. Quick to seize this opportunity, General Washington made a swift
march of more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) to the Chesapeake from the New
York area.

Accompanied by Rochambeau's French army, he beset the British by land,
while de Grasse blockaded them by sea after beating off the British fleet.
Completely cornered, Cornwallis surrendered his entire force of seven thousand
men, on October 19, 1781, as his band appropriately played "The World Turn'd
Upside Down." The triumph was no less French than American: the French
provided essentially all the seapower and about half of the regular troops in the
besieging army of some sixteen thousand men.

Stunned by news of the disaster, Prime Minister Lord North cried, "Oh God! It's
all over! It's all over!" But it was not. George III stubbornly planned to continue
the struggle, for England was far from being crushed. It still had fifty-four
thousand troops in North America, including thirty-two thousand in the United
States. Washington returned with his army to New York, there to continue
keeping a vigilant eye on the British force of ten thousand men.

Fighting actually continued for more than a year after Yorktown, with Patriot-
Loyalist warfare in the South especially savage. "No quarter for Tories" was the
common battle cry. One of Washington's most valuable contributions was to
keep the languishing cause alive, the army in the field, and the states together
during these critical months. Otherwise a satisfactory peace treaty might never
have been signed."

The American Pageant
Chapter 8.14
Yorktown and the Final Curtain

Britain's terms were liberal almost beyond belief. The enormous trans-Allegheny
area was thrown in as a virtual gift, for George Rogers Clark had captured only a
small segment of it. Why the generosity? Had the United States beaten England
to its knees?

The key to the riddle may be found in the Old World. At the time the peace terms
were drafted, England was trying to seduce America from its French alliance, so
it made the terms as alluring as possible. The shaky Whig ministry, hanging on
by its fingernails for only a few months, was more friendly to the Americans than
were the Tories. It was determined, by a policy of liberality, to salve recent
wounds, reopen old trade channels, and prevent future wars over the coveted
trans-Allegheny region. This far-visioned policy was regrettably not followed by
the successors of the Whigs.

In spirit, the Americans made a separate peace--contrary to the French alliance.
In fact, they did not. The Paris Foreign Office formally approved the terms of
peace, though disturbed by the lone-wolf course of its American ally. France was
immensely relieved by the prospect of bringing the costly conflict to an end and
of freeing itself from its embarrassing promises to the Spanish crown.

America alone gained from the world-girdling war. The British, though soon to
stage a comeback, were battered and beaten. The French gained sweet revenge
but plunged headlong down the slippery slope to bankruptcy and revolution. In
truth, fortune smiled benignly on the Americans. Snatching their independence
from the furnace of world conflict, they began their national career with a
splendid territorial birthright and a priceless heritage of freedom. Seldom, if ever,
have any people been so favored."

The American Pageant
Chapter 8.16
A New Nation Legitimized