He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. He has combined, with others, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: For imposing taxes on us without our consent: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses: For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. JOHN HANCOCK. Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Resolved, That copies of the Declaration be sent to the several assemblies, conventions and committees, or councils of safety, and to the several commanding officers of the continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of the united States, at the head of the army. EXERCISES AND REFERENCES 1. The outbreak of the war; Van Tyne, 25-36; Channing, III, 155-181. 2. The organization of an army: Van Tyne, 37-49. 3. The rule of King Mob: Hart, II, 458-461. 4. The Second Continental Congress: Hart, II, 525-530. 5. The battle of Bunker Hill: Hitchcock, 102-117. 6. The Revolution, 1774-76: Greene, 437-458. 7. The New World experiment in democracy: Becker, 20-63. 8. Dates for the chronological table: 1775, 1776. 9. What two buildings in Boston became famous because of the Revolutionary meetings held in them? Give an account of woman's work for the soldiers of the Revolution. Read in the class a striking passage from the speech made by John Adams on the Boston Massacre: Harding, 11-23. Read in the class "The Liberty Tree": Hart, II, 454. What was the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence? 10. Prepare a summary of this chapter. The Forces of the Contestants Geographical and Economic Conditions XIV INDEPENDENCE WON After the colonists declared their independence, they were compelled to win it with the sword. What was the story of their struggle? What plan of campaign was directed against them? What aid did they receive? What was the outcome of the struggle and what were the terms of peace? THE CONTESTANTS AND THEIR PLANS The Declaration of Independence did not change the plans of either the British or the Americans: it simply nerved the arms of both contestants and caused both to throw their full strength into the war that was already in progress. Early in 1776 the English Government was planning to send against the colonists the greatest force that had ever crossed the Atlantic, and by the time independence was declared, 50,000 soldiers under British command were available for service in America. Of this force about 17,000 were Hessians, German soldiers hired by George III from the princes of Hesse, Anhalt and Brunswick. Against this British array the Americans could offer an army whose paper strength was about 33,000, but whose actual fighting strength was hardly 20,000. The British plan of campaign was determined largely by geographical and economic conditions. The Hudson River and the Potomac River divided the colonies-or States as they could be called after the Declaration of Independence— into three distinct groups: the four New England States with a population of about three fourths of a million; the Middle States with a population of something less than a million; and the Southern States with a population of something more than a million. New England and the Southern States were so widely separated that they could support each other only with the greatest difficulty. Troops could not pass from New England to the South by water because England had blockaded all the American ports and was in full command of the sea. To pass by land was impracticable, because a march from Boston to Savannah would have consumed sixty days. It took about thirty days for a letter to pass from General Washington in New York to General Greene in the Carolinas. The Declaration of Independence was known about as soon in Paris as it was in Charleston. Moreover, the three groups of States were separated in spirit by the fact that each had its own peculiar economic life: New England was deeply interested in the fisheries and the ocean trade; the Middle group in the raising of food supplies; and the Southern group in the production of tobacco and rice. The British Plan of Now, the British when making out their plan of war kept in mind the lines of cleavage by which the three groups were already separated, and planned a series of operations by which Campaign the sections might be forced still further apart, hoping that when the groups were completely separated, they could be dealt with one at a time and thus easily conquered. So they determined at the outset to make two bold strokes. First, they would carry the war into the South, conquer that section, and then conciliate it and detach it from its allegiance to the cause of independence. They thought conciliation would be easy because the social and commercial ties between the South and England were really very strong (p. 105). Second, they would take and hold the Hudson River and Lake Champlain, then drive the wedge between New England and the Middle States, and thus make it impossible for these two groups to communicate with each other. The of the Throughout the war it was the policy of the Americans to conduct a defensive campaign. "On our side," said Washing- Tactics ton, "the war should be defensive that we should on all occa- Americans sions avoid a general action nor put anything to risk unless compelled by a necessity into which we ought never to be drawn. . . . The Wisdom of cooler moments and experienced men have decided that we should protract the war if possible." Reasons for a policy of this kind were numerous enough. On the British side were the best regular troops of Europe, com |