to declare that they had only five hundred men engaged against a British force of five thousand. The most correct of the American historians estimate their troops engaged that day at four thousand; but general Gage declared that the Americans were three times the number of the English, or nearly seven thousand. The battle was called the battle of Bunker's Hill, though really fought on the lower, or Breed's Hill. the next moment the Americans were seen running for their lives down the easy descent of the hill, towards the blazing ruins of Charlestown. Had Gage had a proper reserve ready to rush upon the flying route on the Neck, few of them would have remained to join their fellows. But the inconceivable imbecility which distinguished the English commanders in this war looks more like a benumbing agency of Providence than anything in the long and glorious annals of England, under usual circumstances. The flying Americans were On the English side, the men and officers were confessed pretty sharply enfiladed, in passing Charlestown Neck, from to have fought bravely: the mischief lay in the stupid the Gloucester man-of-war and two floating batteries; but there the pursuit ended, and the Americans were let off with a loss of four hundred and fifty killed and wounded; whilst we had one thousand and fifty killed and wounded, including eighty-nine commissioned officers. On our side, lieutenant-colonel Abercrombie, major Pitcairn, major Williams, and major Spendlove, fell. The chief officer on the American side who was killed was Dr. Warren. The Americans, though driven from the hill, and leaving the victorious English there, spread everywhere the boast of a splendid victory on their part; and they did not hesitate arrangements of the commander, both in attacking in the very worst place, and not following up the advantage with fresh troops. On the American side, Washington blamed considerably the conduct of the officers, whilst praising the men, and, after a strict inquiry, cashiered captain Callender, of the artillery. Notwithstanding the real outbreak of the war, congress yet professed to entertain hopes of ultimate reconciliation When the reinforcements had arrived from England, and it was supposed that part of them were destined for New York, it issued orders that, so long as the forces remained quiet in their barracks, they should not be molested; but if of the peace by feigning a belief in a design of an invasion they attempted to raise fortifications, or to cut off the town of the colonies from Canada, of which there was notoriously from the country, they should be stoutly opposed. When no intention; and they gave orders that an exact inventory the news of the surprise of the forts on the Lake Champlain of the cannon and military stores there captured should be arrived, congress endeavoured to excuse so direct a breach made, in order to their restoration, "when the former harmony between Great Britain and her colonies, so ardently wished for by the latter, should render it consistent with the overruling law of self-preservation." After the battle of Bunker's Hill, congress still maintained this tone. On the 8th of July they signed a petition to the king, drawn up by John Dickenson, in the mildest terms, and who, when to his own surprise the petition was adopted by the congress, rose, and said that there was not a word in the whole petition that he did not approve of, except the word "congress." This, however, was far from the feeling of many members, especially from New England and Virginia, the homes of such fiery democrats as Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Hancock, and Samuel Adams; and Benjamin Harrison immediately rose and declared that there was but one word in the whole petition that he did approve, and that was the word "congress." The petition to the king expressed an earnest desire for a speedy and permanent reconciliation, declaring that, notwithstanding their sufferings, they retained in their hearts "too tender a regard for the kingdom from which they derived their origin to request such a reconciliation as might be inconsistent with her dignity or welfare." At the same time, they resolved that this appeal, which they called "The Olive Branch," and which they sent on by Mr. Richard Penn, one of the descendants of William Penn, and a proprietary still of Pennsylvania, should, if unsuccessful, be their last. And, at the same time, they drew up two other documents in a very different tone. One was an address to the people of Great Britain, and another to the people of Ireland. In the address to the people of England, they recapitulated the heads of the controversy, and called on them to oppose these outrages of their ministry, as equally fatal to English as to American freedom. They thanked, in the address to the people of Ireland, that people for their sympathy, and glanced significantly at the like grievances of the Irish. They accompanied these documents by another to the city of London, through the medium of Wilkes, and followed these by one to Jamaica, in which, though they admitted that by its insular situation it could not help them, they yet felt the consolation of its kindred feeling for their oppressions. At the same time, congress also took measures for cultivating the goodwill of the Indians. They established three boards of Indian affairs-one for the Six Nations and other northern tribes, one for the Cherokees and Creeks, and a third for intervening nations. They voted money for the education of Indian youth at Wheelock's school, at Hanover, In New Hampshire; and sent Kirkland, a missionary, and other agents, to the Six Nations. But Guy Johnson, the British Indian agent, who had a wonderful influence with those Indians, ordered these agents out of the country. ment, and are of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns, and murder our people. Look upon your hands; they are stained with the blood of your relatives! You and I were long friends; you are now my enemy, and I am yours, "BENJAMIN FRANKLIN." The spirit of hostility which now blazed out in minds which disdained the double-dealing of Franklin showed itself from north to south. Wooster, at the command of congress, marched some regiments of his Connecticut men into the vicinity of New York, to keep down the royalists there, and prevent the landing of British troops. Wooster quartered himself near Haerlem, five miles from New York. This led to increased confusion. The governor Tryon had orders from lord Dartmouth to treat the place as in rebellion, if any attempt was made to raise fortifications, or to seize the king's stores. The insurgents had already endeavoured to carry away the guns from the battery; and the Asia ship of war, lying in the harbour, had fired on them, and wounded severely three men. Some days after, in retaliation, the insurgents seized and destroyed two of the Asia's boats. The provincial congress ordered new boats to be built; but these were sawn in pieces on the stocks in the night. This state of things continued till November, the royalists and the insurgents growing ever more embittered. At the head of a company of ardent Connecticut republicans was one captain Sears, who, with many others, had gone over from New York disgusted with the lukewarmness of that place. Incensed at the freedom of the royalist newspaper, published by James Rivington, Sears, one day in November, at noon, marched into New York at the head of seventy-five indignant sons of Liberty, entered Rivington's house, destroyed his papers, and carried off into Connecticut his types, and there cast them into bullets. On their way back through West Chester, they also seized the clergyman and a justice of the peace as tories, and carried them away. The New York congress highly resented this outrage as an invasion of their rights as a distinct colony, and demanded the return of the types to the chairman of the committee of safety of New York. But Trumbull, the governor of Connecticut, declared, in the true spirit of chicane, that Sears was one of their own citizens; that it was, therefore, no invasion by Connecticut, shutting his eyes to the broad fact, that Sears was in the pay of Connecticut, and attended by citizens of Connecticut. He asserted that it was merely an attack on private property, and, if the injured required a remedy, they must seek it by law. At the same time, the committee of safety of New York was in the daily commission of equal outrages on its own fellow-citizens. By its orders, doors were broken open to To express their sense of Franklin's services in England, seize arms for the use of the troops, and these orders were and to recompense him for his dismissal by the king from extended to the whole colony. These affairs showed that the office of Postmaster-General of America, they ap- the Americans were beginning the revolution on very free pointed him the Postmaster-General themselves. Franklin, principles indeed, under which no person or private property thus rewarded, continued to play the same double part as was safe against the plea of necessity. The agents of the he had done. He signed the mild and tender petition of committee often went about backed by a battalion of Dickenson to the king, and with the same hand, almost at soldiers; but even then they found people sturdy enough to the same moment, he wrote this letter to an old friend resist and defend their domestic rights. The Long Islanders in London:-" Mr. Strahan,-You are a member of parlia-hid away their arms, and declared that they would blow out A.D. 1775.] DISORGANISED STATE OF THE COLONIAL ARMY. 129 the brains of any one attempting to take them. On the con-out powder; and all this the British officers, as we shall trary, in some parts of the island, they turned the tables on see, perfectly well knew, and yet they lay still, as if under the revolutionists, and took away their arms. The general some spell of sorcery! congress was speedily compelled to repeal the order for the seizure of arms, which was likely to create a fatal division amongst the colonists. In New York there continued many persons well-affected to the mother country, who would most gladly have seen her authority restored. The state of feeling in the colony of New York and elsewhere was so alarming, that the congress passed a resolution far more destructive of personal right and liberty than that for the seizure of arins. This was a seizure of persons. The members of the revolutionary congresses and committees of safety were desired "to arrest and secure every person in the respective colonies whose going at large might, in their opinion, endanger the safety of the colony, or the liberties of America." Tryon, governor of New York, retired on board the Halifax packet for his personal safety, but he still continued to carry on communications with the loyal party on shore. In many of the colonies, where there was scarcely a single English soldier, the wellaffected were obliged to keep their sentiments to themselves. In North and South Carolina, the governors, Martin and lord William Campbell, were obliged to fly. Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, in the very focus of the revolutionary fire, on the first news of the fight at Lexington, had sent the powder of the province on board a king's ship in the river, and then sending his family on board too, fortified his palace, and still continued to hold out. Sir James Wright, governor of Georgia, wrote to Boston for troops, but could get none, yet he kept up the zeal of the anti-revolutionary party, and prevented the province sending delegates to the congress till July. When Washington arrived at the camp at Cambridge, instead of twenty thousand men, which he expected on his side, he found only sixteen thousand, and of these only fourteen thousand fit for duty. He describes them as “a mixed multitude of people under very little order or government." They had no uniforms; and Washington recommended congress to send them out ten thousand hunting shirts, as giving them something of a uniform appearance. There was not a single dollar in the military chest; the supply of provisions was extremely deficient and uncertain. There was a great want of engineering tools; and he soon discovered that the battle of Bunker's Hill, which, at a distance, was boasted of as a victory, had been a decided defeat. He immediately set about to reduce this discouraging chaos into new order. Assisted by general Lee, he commenced by having prayers read at the head of the respective regiments every morning. He broke up the freedom which confounded officers and men; he compelled subordination by the free use of the lash, where commands would not serve. He kept them daily at active drill. He laboured incessantly to complete the lines, so that very soon it would be impossible for the enemy to get between the ranks. The reverend William Emerson, one of the army chaplains, gives a picturesque description of this camp, and which vastly resembles, in its tents and booths, an Australian digging:-"It is very diverting to walk amongst the tents. They are as different in their form as their owners are in their dress, and every tent is a portraiture of the temper and taste of the persons who encamp in it. Some are of boards, and some of sail-cloth; some partly of the one, and partly of the other. Others, again, are made of stone and turf, brick, or brush. Some are thrown up in a hurry; some curiously wrought with doors and windows, done with wreaths and withes in the manner of a basket. Some are your proper tents and marquees, looking like the regular camp of an army.” If a tenth part of the spirit had been shown by the British government which had been shown in the German wars, where hundreds of millions were voted for soldiers and ships, such a force would have been sent into the American towns, and such a fleet along its coasts, as would speedily have reduced all resistance. The only towns of any considerable size were Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Charlestown: the three largest scarcely contained twenty thousand inhabitants each; and none of the others had half that number. All these towns lay on or near the sea-board. They could have been all held by strong garrisons, the ports blockaded, and the trade of America annihilated, by a sufficient fleet. The settlements extended for a thousand miles along the Atlantic. Nothing could have been easier, with a sufficient naval force, than to have scoured the whole of this coast, cut off all trading, and sate still on shore awaiting the event. This was the plan suggested by colonel Barré, who knew the nature of the country, and warned them of all things not to follow the practised riflemen of America into the woods and swamps of the interior. But the necessary ships were not forthcoming; all the force, the miserable one of twenty thousand, that the ministry in this imminent emergency had sent for the support of the English authority, was cooped up in Boston, inactive—as it Before this, Georgia had sent in her adhesion to the conwere paralysed, and invested by an army without shoes, gress. The reverend Dr. Zably and four others were many of them without shirts, without discipline, and with-elected delegates to that body. Though Georgia was not at But the great and-if the English generals had been only properly awake-the fatal want, was that of powder. Washington found that they had but nine rounds of powder to a musket, and next to none for the artillery. “The world," said Franklin, "wondered that we so seldom fired a cannon; why, we could not afford it!" The Massachusetts assembly had passed a resolution that "no inhabitant in the colony should fire a gun at beast, bird, or mark, without a real necessity therefor." And all this was disclosed to general Gage by a deserter, and he still lay in a profound catalepsy! The ministry at home, scarcely more awake to the real danger, were yet astonished at his lethargy; at his thus allowing the insurgents every day to strengthen their position and perfect their discipline; and they recalled him under the plea of consulting him on the affairs of the colony. He sailed from Boston in October, leaving the chief command to general Howe. all included in the late severe acts, its representatives declared disturbed condition of America. He seemed to attribute the presumption of the American colonies to the encouragement they had received here from persons who had been active to infuse into the minds of the colonists ideas contrary to the constitution of those dependencies; that the Americans had now openly avowed their hostility, and proceeded to bloodshed; they had usurped all the legislative and executive authority there, had laid hands on the revenue, and were in arms against our whole power. He complained that they had tried to arouse us, whilst we were candidly and anxiously seeking to satisfy them; and after praising the moderation and forbearance of the parent state, he declared it was time to exert our mighty strength and resources to quell the rebellion. He avowed that he had hired foreign troops at a cheaper rate to assist in the task of reducing the insurgents, but that, in order to employ as many as possible of our own soldiers in this office, he had sent his own electoral troops to supply the place of British ones at Gibraltar and Port Mahon. This was a sad confession, confirming all that the city addresses had surmised, that foreign troops were to be employed to cut down our own kindred. Yet the deluded monarch talked of tempering severity with mercy; and having just repelled the Americans who had petitioned for a last Government, how-hearing, and a last chance of argument, he declared that he had sent commissioners over to America to receive the submission of any repentant state. Lastly, George assured parliament that he had received the most satisfactory assurances from all foreign powers of peace and sympathy, and that, therefore, he saw no probability of the dispute being prolonged by the interference of any other state. A few days after this, Richard Penn, attended by Arthur Lee, the resident agent of the American colonies, presented to the king the petition from congress, and was informed that there was no answer. This was certain to put the finish to the American resentment. It was received as an act of the last contempt; and ever after, through the unhappy contest, if any Americans were inclined to regret the war, they were always reminded of the second petition of congress, and the haughty rejection of it, and with it all chance of adjustment. The gentlemen and traders of London, struck with consternation at this unyielding temper on the part of the government, presented, on the 11th of October, a solemn address to the throne, expressing the most awful apprehensions of the results, and of the ruin of our commerce; of the well-grounded expectation that France and Spain would come into the struggle against us; and of the report, only too correct, that the ministry were contemplating the employment of foreign mercenaries to tread down the liberties and the people of America, who were our own flesh and blood. Other addresses were poured in from town and country of the like kind, and ministers and their friends exerted themselves to procure counteracting ones from both London and the provinces. Under such circumstances parliament met on the 26th of October. The king, in his speech, declared that he had called the parliament together thus early, on account of the Such was this most unprophetic speech. Application had indeed been made to the continental powers on friendly terms with us, requesting them to prevent their subjects supplying ammunition or other assistance to the rebellious colonists. Spain refused to pledge herself to any such condition. France merely announced to her subjects, that, if they traded with the Americans, they would do it at their own risk. Denmark and Holland engaged to maintain neutrality and non-intervention of trade. But in most of these countries the subjects were left to elude the conditions. From Holland powder was exported as schiedam; and in cases where such cargoes were brought to the notice of the government, the offender was only fined the paltry sum of ninety pounds. Lord John Cavendish moved an amendment upon the address, praying the king to institute fuller inquiry into the circumstances and conditions of America before calling foreign troops, expressing a conviction that the whole difference arose from want of adequate information in this country, and that a serious review of the whole causes of the unhappy difference might yet avert the threatened horrors of a civil war. This amendment was zealously supported by the opposition. Barré declared that the late campaign had been conducted by fools and madmen. Fox said that we had lost more already in one campaign than Alexander the Great had ever gained in all his conquests, for we had lost a continent. General Conway was equally severe. Lord North defended this measure, and the amendment was thrown out by two hundred and seventy-eight votes against one hundred |