Failure of the English invasion of North Carolina The Northern army. Complaints of Washington Discontent and discouragement of the Americans The Revolution completely dependent on France Surrender of Yorktown Predatory war in Virginia The English at Yorktown Washington and Rochambeau march to Virginia. De Grasse enters the Chesapeake Destruction of New London Preliminary articles of peace with France and Spain HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I.1 AMERICA, 1763-1776. AT the time of the Peace of Paris in 1763, the thirteen American colonies which were afterwards detached from the English Crown contained, according to the best computation, about a million and a half freemen, and their number probably slightly exceeded two millions at the time of the Declaration of Independence. No part of the British Empire had gained so largely by the late war and by the ministry of Pitt. The expulsion of the French from Canada and of the Spaniards from Florida, by removing for ever the danger of foreign interference, had left the colonists almost absolute masters of their destinies, and had dispelled the one dark cloud which hung over their future. No serious danger any longer menaced them. No limits could be assigned to their expansion. Their exultation was unbounded, and it showed itself in an outburst of genuine loyalty. The name of Pittsburg given to the fortress erected where Fort Duquesne had once stood attested the gratitude of America to the minister to whom she 1 Chapter XI. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century. owed so much. Massachusetts, the foremost of the New England States, voted a costly monument in Westminster Abbey to Lord Howe, who had fallen in the conquest of Canada. The assembly of the same State in a congratulatory address to the Governor declared that without the assistance of the parent State they must have fallen a prey to the power of France, that without the compensation granted to them by Parliament the burdens of the war would have been insupportable, that without the provisions of the treaty of peace all their successes would have been delusive. In an address to the King they repeated the same acknowledgment, and pledged themselves, in terms to which later events gave a strange significance, to demonstrate their gratitude by every possible testimony of duty and loyalty.1 Several acute observers had already predicted that the triumph of England would be soon followed by the revolt of her colonies. I have quoted in a former chapter the remarkable passage in which the Swedish traveller, Kalm, contended in 1748 that the presence of the French in Canada, by making the English colonists depend for their security on the support of the mother country, was the main cause of the submission of the colonies. In his 'Notes upon England,' which were probably written about 1730, Montesquieu had dilated upon the restrictive character of the English commercial code, and had expressed his belief that England would be the first nation abandoned by her colonies. A few years later, Argenson, who has left some of the most striking political predictions upon record, foretold in his Memoirs that the English colonies in America would one day rise against the mother Grahame's Hist. of the United States, iv. 94, 95. Hut chinson's Hist. of Massachusetts Bay from 1749 to 1774, p. 101. |