Conceived in Liberty (263 page)

*
Cf. the thoughtful discussion by Mackesy in
The War for America,
p. 424.

Only in the remote western country did Yorktown have little softening impact. In early 1782, British and Indian raids on the frontier were resumed in full force: Brant and the Mohawks, in raids out of Oswego, intensified Creek sorties against the Georgia frontier and on the new Cumberland River (Tennessee) settlements. In response to the raids and the exposed western Pennsylvania frontier, the citizens of Washington County struck west from Pittsburgh against the Indians. In early March 1782, a hundred settlers marched against the Indian town of Gnadenhutten and nearby settlements on the Tuscarawas River in the Ohio Valley. There they came upon a group of Indians who had been converted to Christianity by Moravian missionaries, and who were well known to have been neutral and at peace in all conflicts since the French and Indian Wars. Assured of their unharmed removal to Pittsburgh, the friendly and unarmed Moravian Indians gathered in their chapel. Even though a tiny white minority pointed out that the Moravians had always been friendly, the overwhelming majority of whites urged that they be slaughtered on the spot, resting their case on the shameless frontier axiom, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” The next morning, March 7, the whites took the Moravians, two or three at a time, to two designated “slaughter houses,” in which the Indians were brutally killed. Ninety Moravian Indians, including 61 women and children, were butchered in cold blood, and their scalps were taken home as trophies by the proud frontiersmen. Before leaving, the three Moravian mission towns were burned to the ground and the houses looted.

To this exploit was added an attack by frontier militia on a small island
near Pittsburgh, where a dozen friendly Delaware Indians were stationed. Many of these had served the American militia faithfully for years; nevertheless they were captured and murdered on the spot.

The slaughter at Gnadenhutten was condemned by the Pennsylvania Assembly, which to its credit called it “an act disgraceful to humanity.” But the frontiersmen were pleased. In all their massacres, the murderers had acted in the time-honored tradition of the frontier in dealing with Indians: when you can’t successfully handle powerful Indian enemies on the frontier, fall upon and kill friendly or neutral Indians living nearby.

These exploits emboldened the frontiersmen to strike deeply westward at the focus of hostile Indian strength on the Sandusky River. The expedition set out on May 25, with nearly 500 mounted militiamen under Col. William Crawford. But the massiveness of his force and the slowness of the advance alerted the British, the Tories, and the Indians to the threat, and they gathered in force to meet the Americans near the Sandusky River. After an inconclusive skirmish, the British and Indian forces (including some Delawares) managed to encircle the Americans on June 6 and panic them into wild flight; the casualties probably amounted to over a hundred Americans, including the capture of Crawford and other leaders of the expedition. In retaliation for the massacre of the helpless Delawares and their Moravian kinsmen, the Delawares burned Crawford to death. The frontiersmen could not persuade the East to equip a retaliatory expedition.

Another important frontier raid was that of the Tory John Connolly, who struck from the British base at Niagara with 200 Seneca Indians. He attacked Hannastown, east of Pittsburgh, burned the town, killed or kidnapped 30 inhabitants, and devastated the surrounding area.

News of Yorktown finally filtered into Detroit in early April, and led to a great all-Indian congress of the western Indians at Wapatomica in late June. Seeing that the Revolutionary War was almost over, the Indians cogently decided on one last climactic effort to smash and obliterate the American frontier in the West. They resolved to burn all prisoners and to stop at no means to achieve their goal. Advancing with British Indian agents Alexander McKee and the Tory William Caldwell, 1,250 Indians and Tories approached Pennsylvania. False rumors of an approach against them by George Rogers Clark delayed the advance and caused half the Indian force to scatter. The massive invasion was transmuted into two large thrusts. One, under Capt. Andrew Bradt of the Tory rangers, besieged Fort Henry at Wheeling in mid-September, but he could not crack the defense and was soon forced to withdraw.

The other thrust, under McKee and Caldwell, moved to invade Kentucky, which now seemed a weakened target. In March, a small Wyandot raiding party against Estill’s, deep in Kentucky, had surprised and worried
the frontiersmen by altering their usual pattern. Instead of fleeing from a unit of local militia, the Indians turned and fought against them and, what is more, defeated them. Furthermore, a lack of funds and a characteristic unwillingness of the militia to fight far from home prevented Clark from building defensive forts on the Ohio River. Now, in early August 1782, McKee and Caldwell, with 350 men, crossed the Ohio at the mouth of the Limestone and drove southwest to besiege the stockade at Bryan’s Station. The forty-odd defenders stoutly held their stockade, but they lost their livestock and crops to the plundering and burning of the British forces. Militia gathered all over Kentucky, and began to pursue the Caldwell column, which had retreated to Blue Licks, on the Licking River. There, with fewer than 200 men, the Americans attacked them on August 19 without waiting for reinforcements, and were completely routed by the unexpected close-quarter charge of the Indian line. Over 40 percent of the Kentuckians were killed trying to flee back across the river, after which the satisfied Indian-Tory force withdrew across the Ohio.

The Kentucky frontiersmen, who had been convinced that Indians could not fight successfully man-to-man at close quarters (an American analog to the British attitude toward the Americans), were severely shaken by the battle of Blue Licks. This blow was soon reinforced by the Indian capture of the stockade at Kincheloe’s Station.

The frontier was nevertheless able to recover toward the end of the year, a recoupment greatly aided by the British decision to call off the western Indians when the war drew to a close. In September, Virginia’s Col. John Sevier and 250 Holston River (in what is now northeastern Tennessee) horsemen invaded Chickamauga and Cherokee country and destroyed and burned many towns. And in November, Clark took more than a thousand mounted Kentucky riflemen north to destroy all of the main towns and most of the food supply of the Shawnee Indians in the Ohio country.

Yorktown was surely “the surrender heard round the world.” Rejoicing abounded throughout the United States and France, while in stunned Great Britain Lord North exclaimed: “Oh, God! it’s all over.” To aggravate the intense dismay in England, the surrender came at a time when Britain was suffering other great losses in the worldwide war against France and Spain: the losses of West Florida, Minorca, Tobago and St. Eustatius in the West Indies, defeats in India, and naval threats in the British channel. It became shatteringly clear to the British that the war against America could not be won; an agonizing reappraisal was evidently in order.

The British opposition to the war had begun to intensify during 1780, and opponents made effective use among the country gentry of the swelling taxes and national debt incurred by the war. By late 1780, the opposition was able to use Cornwallis’ reversals, especially the one at King’s Mountain, as an effective argument; the government replied again with sentimental appeals concerning the supposed mass of American Tories who would be left in the lurch by a British withdrawal. It also played upon the common fear of gains by France. But now the country gentry and other independent members of Parliament recognized the collapse of both the southern strategy and the Tory myth, and the enormous government expense that would be needed to carry on the war was apparent to all. Furthermore, the argument about France now cut the other way, for unless peace were made with America, more imperial territory might yet be lost to France—and to Spain.

The impact of Yorktown upon Great Britain was all the more shocking
for the vaunting optimism that Lord George Germain, the war leader and ultrahardliner, had displayed throughout 1781. Throughout that year, he had insisted that the Americans were about to collapse at any moment. Even many of his opponents believed him; was he not the most knowledgeable person in Britain about the American war? But with Yorktown this myth was shattered.

King George, of course, was indomitable; still he babbled the hard line: “The prosecution of the war can alone preserve us from a most ignominious peace.” At his side was Benedict Arnold, whose career would be shattered by Britain’s making peace with the United States. Arnold repeated the discredited opinion about imminent victory and the Tory masses in America, but this time nobody listened. One by one the Tories soon began to resign from the cabinet—and the prosecution of the war. The lord advocate, Henry Dundas, who had earned the nickname “Starvation” by his zeal to starve out Boston in 1774, now despaired of the war and resigned from the cabinet, as did Richard Rigby. In contrast, the Whigs exulted in the defeat at Yorktown; Horace Walpole declared, “Whatever puts an end to the American war will save the lives of thousands—millions of money too.” Lord Derby even began to talk exuberantly of “scaffolds” for the king and his ministers.

By Christmas of 1781, most of the country gentry opposed continuing the war. The end of the British war effort now seemed inevitable; within the cabinet, the great stumbling block to peace remained Lord Germain, who evolved his own domino theory: the loss of America would lead inexorably to the loss of the West Indies, the American trade and the West Indies trade; ultimately, peace would mean “that we can never continue to exist as a great or powerful nation after we have lost or renounced the sovereignty of America.” It was clear, however, that if the king wished to save the North ministry from collapse, Germain would have to go, and many weeks were spent at the king’s insistence on continuing Germain’s policy through his successors, if not with the man himself. In private, North was pessimistic about the war. In December, he asked Parliament to do nothing that would hinder peace negotiations, and jettisoning Germain was to be part of this phased retreat. Germain was finally ousted in early February 1782, to be replaced by the veteran technician Welbore Ellis.

With King George stubbornly refusing either to abandon the war or to allow the North ministry to fall, the administration fought a delaying action against the opposition. But as soon as Germain was ousted, Charles James Fox launched a campaign in Parliament for removal of the Earl of Sandwich from the Admiralty. The prolonged and futile defense of Sandwich mobilized the opposition, until Fox was able to push through Parliament the crucial resolution of February 27, which declared against further
prosecution of the war. On this vote, many of the king’s friends deserted him. Finally, on May 4, the House declared sternly that all who wished to prosecute or even advise the prosecution of any further offensive operations in America were to be considered enemies of their country. The war policy was finished.

From this victory the opposition proceeded to the ultimate step in ending the war effort: smashing the remains of the North ministry. With the government’s shaky Parliamentary majority dwindling daily and the country gentry rapidly deserting, Lord Rockingham insisted that he would not enter any coalition. He would take the prime mipistry only if granted full power to name his own ministers, to enact economic reform in cutting the budget, and to grant independence to America. He had wisely absorbed the lesson of his party theoretician, Edmund Burke, that it was necessary to have a clear-cut and firm program for the party as well as sole responsibility of the ministry for carrying it out. The king wildly muttered about abdication, but North in despair finally prevailed upon the king to accept his resignation on March 20. In abject surrender, King George was forced to replace him with his worst enemy, Lord Rockingham, one week later. The military phase of the American conflict was over; the conclusion of the war was now in the hands of the diplomats.

The triumph of Rockingham was the triumph of the Burke principle of party: the importance of remaining true to party principles and not accepting coalitions with groups of Tories. By remaining true to a program of “economical reform” and peace with an independent United States, Rockingham forced the king to turn to him to provide an alternative regime when the policy of war and high spending broke down. The only exception was Earl Shelburne and his followers. Under Rockingham, Whigs poured into government; the leader of the old Chathamite forces, Shelburne was the Whigs’ only—and fatal—concession to the concept of coalition. The accession of Rockingham marked the definitive turn in Britain from the rule of the king and his friends to the rule of Parliament, as well as the corollary turn from the mere factional rule of personal cliques to a government of definite and demarcated political parties.

The Rockingham ministry swiftly abolished the post of secretary of state for the American department and two critically important figures took their places under Prime Minister Rockingham: Fox as foreign secretary, and Shelburne in charge of home, Irish, and colonial affairs as secretary of state for the southern department. As commander-in-chief for America, the new ministry confirmed North’s decision to replace the discredited Clinton with Sir Guy Carleton, the old hero of the Canadian campaign.

The entire new cabinet was united in deciding on military strategy. While peace was being negotiated, the British army was to be completely evacuated from the United States and transferred to Halifax or the West
Indies. Shortages and inefficiencies in handling supplies and transports, however, delayed the evacuation. Savannah was evacuated on July 11, 1782, and its force moved to Charleston; the latter was evacuated on December 14, 300 British ships carrying out of the harbor a multitude consisting of the British army, about 4,000 Tories, and about 5,000 of their Negro slaves. By the time peace was declared, only New York City was left in British hands.