THE TREATY OF PARIS IN 1783

IV. THE PEACE TREATY OF 1783

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The negotiations for peace were carried on from Paris, with Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams to represent the United States. In spite of King George, the fall Peace neof Yorktown overthrew Lord North's ministry; gotiations and the new English government contained statesmen friendly to America, such as Fox, Rockingham, and Shelburne (page 183). This fact and the remarkable ability of the American negotiators resulted in a treaty marvelously advantageous. England could not well avoid conceding American independence, but Shelburne meant to do it in generous fashion. He intended not merely peace, he said, but "reconciliation with America, on the noblest terms and by the noblest means."

West

The critical question concerned territory. Just before the war (1769), a few Virginians had crossed the western mountains to settle in fertile lands between the Ohio The signifand Cumberland rivers, in what we now call Ken-icance of the tucky and Tennessee; and, during the war itself, many thousands had established homes in that region. From the Kentucky settlements, George Rogers Clark, a Virginia officer, in incredibly daring campaigns (1778-1779), had captured from England the old French posts Kaskaskia and Cahokia, on the Mississippi, and Vincennes on the Wabash. While preparing for this expedition in 1777, Clark had received a letter of encouragement from Thomas Jefferson, who, even so early, felt keenly the importance of the West. "Much solicitude," he wrote, "will be felt for the outcome of your expedition.... If successful, it will have an important bearing in establishing our northeastern boundary." This prophecy was now fulfilled. The conquered district contained only French settlers, but it had been organized, like Kentucky, as a Virginia county. The Americans, therefore, had ground for claiming territory to the Mississippi, and such extension of territory was essential to our future development. England, however, at first expected us to surrender this thinly settled western region in return for the

means to
leave the

West to
England

evacuation of New York, Charleston, and other cities still held by her armies. Moreover, France and Spain secretly France intended that the treaty should shut up our new nation between the Atlantic and the Appalachians, leaving the southwest to Spain and the Indians, and handing back to England the northwest, which legally had been part of Canada (note on page 201). By the treaty of 1778, we were bound to make no peace without the consent of France, and our commissioners had been strictly instructed by Congress to act only with the advice of Vergennes, the French minister. But Jay and Adams suspected Vergennes of bad faith, and finally persuaded Franklin to disregard the instructions. France had no desire to injure America, but she had no objection to leaving it helpless and dependent upon her favor; and she did wish to satisfy her ally Spain, whom she had dragged into the war. The story goes

American

that, while Franklin and Jay were discussing the situation, Franklin asked in surprise, "What! would you break your instructions?" "As I break this pipe," said Jay, throwing his pipe into the fireplace. Franklin had rendered incalculable diplomatic service to his country, but his long and intimate relations with the French government had negotiators unfitted him for an independent course in this crisis. At all events, with patriotic daring, the American commissioners did enter into secret negotiations with England, and secured terms which Vergennes could not well refuse to approve when the draft of the treaty was placed before him.

secure the West

46

By this Treaty of 1783, England acknowledged the independence of the United States, with territory reaching to the Mississippi, and from the Great Lakes to Florida. She The Treaty gave up without consideration, not only the seacoast cities she held, but also the Northwest posts, which had never been seen by an American army. She also granted to the Americans the right to share in the Newfoundland fisheries, from which other foreign nations were shut out. In return, the American Congress recommended to the various States a reasonable treatment of the Loyalists, and promised

THE MEANING TO THE WORLD

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solemnly (a matter which should have gone without saying) that no State should interpose to prevent Englishmen from recovering in American courts the debts due from Americans before the war. No wonder that the chagrined Vergennes wrote: "The English buy the peace, rather than make it. . . . Their concessions regarding boundaries, fisheries, and the Loyalists exceed anything I had thought possible." The American negotiators told the English commissioners frankly that the "recommendation" regarding the Loyalists

THE SWORDS of Colonel William Prescott and Captain John Linzee, who fought on opposite sides at Bunker Hill. A grandson of Prescott and a granddaughter of Linzee married, and the offspring of this marriage mounted the swords in this way "in token of international friendship and family alliance." They are now in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

would carry no weight. England herself afterwards appropriated large sums of money to compensate partially that unfortunate class of exiles.

The territorial advantages, however, were not fully enjoyed by the United States for some twelve years. When the English forces evacuated the American seaports, they carried away a few hundred Negroes, who, they claimed, had become free by aiding them during the war, and whom they would not now surrender to their old masters. The American State governments made this a pretext for deliberately breaking one of the most reasonable articles of the treaty,

that regarding British debts. Despite the pledged faith of the central government, State after State passed laws to prevent the collection of such debts in their courts. Meantime, the Americans had not at first been ready to take over the posts on the Great Lakes; and when they desired to do so, England refused to surrender them, because of these infractions of the treaty.

The meaning of the

The "Revolution" covers twenty years, twelve of wrangling and eight of war (1763-1775, 1775-1783). It created the first American state. It helped to make the colonial policy of all European countries more enRevolution lightened. It “laid the foundation for the French Revolution," as Arthur Young said in 1789, and so helped modify profoundly the internal character of Europe. It helped tremendously to start England herself — a little later

on her splendid march toward democracy. Whatever their blunders, the Americans had "warred victoriously for the right in a struggle whose outcome vitally affected the whole human race." With a generosity possible only to a great

English generous feeling

people, the English have long recognized this truth, and, with amazing frankness and emphasis, have taught it to their children even in the elementary schools for forty years past. This is why the last two generations of Englishmen have been so much more friendly toward America than most Americans are toward England

until during the World War they came to adopt July Fourth quite as an English red-letter day, celebrating it in regular American fashion.

Perhaps it is a trifle easier for Englishmen to do this because after all England came out of the Revolutionary War

England and the war in Europe

with military glory little tarnished. She had been fighting all Europe as well as America, and only in America had the struggle gone against her. Says Theodore Roosevelt: "England, hemmed in by the ring of her foes, fronted them with a grand courage. In her veins the Berserker blood was up, and she hailed each new enemy with grim delight. Single handed, she kept them all at bay... So with bloody honor, she ended the most disastrous war she had ever waged."