Chapter 1:
Between War and Peace

THE surrender of the Earl of Cornwallis at Yorktown closed the career in America of the only British general who had shown commanding gifts in the field. It closed also the revolution itself. The southern campaign had been undertaken at the wish and upon the plan of Cornwallis. He knew how pronounced division of opinion was in the South, and how certain a hold could be got there upon the sympathy of scores of men who could be of the utmost service to an army in the field. He knew how important it was to close the southern ports, and particularly the Chesapeake, in order to shut out the supplies that came steadily in from over sea. He believed that an effectual blow struck from the south at Virginia, after the reduction of the far southern ports, would secure for the British an almost commanding position on the continent. Had Clinton helped him promptly, instead of grudging him aid; had he been enabled to move rapidly and in force as he had planned, he might have accomplished his purpose effectually, even brilliantly. Even as it was, there had been something very striking about the manner in which he had fought his way from the far southern coasts to Yorktown: the boldness with which he had dared to risk all his connections to deliver a blow; the success with which he had beat off the Americans whenever he was himself personally in command; the comparative freedom with which he had moved in Virginia, despite the gathering strength of the forces under Lafayette. It was the express orders of Clinton, his superior, that had caged him at Yorktown; and it was but seven thousand men he yielded to his fourteen thousand besiegers and de Grasses fleet in the Bay. It was characteristic of Sir Henry Clinton that he did not start from New York to bring the long-needed aid until the very day of his comrade’s surrender. The usual thing had happened. An incompetent commander-in-chief had dallied and blundered with Washington at hand to take advantage of every blunder like a master. Sir Henry had gone to succor Cornwallis as he had gone to meet Burgoyne, when the campaign was over.

Lord North knew what the news meant when it came. He received it "as he would have taken a ball in his breast, opening his arms and exclaiming wildly, ’O God! it is all over!’" But when that first moment of poignant chagrin was past, no doubt a very distinct sense of relief ensued, to offset the bitterness of the humiliating blow. It was imperative for England that the American war should end. She was beset. France and Spain had taken advantage of the revolt of the colonies once more to attack her,—not because they loved America or sympathized with the ideals of liberty for which she fought, but because they wished to make good against England the threatened disaster. United, they were as strong as she upon the seas. Louis XVI. had diligently courted peace with his neighbors on the continent, and had spent the money of France for ships and efficient sailors. Early in 1779 a French squadron had seized the English possessions in Senegal and on the Gambia. That same year a combined French and Spanish fleet swept through the Channel, no English force daring to oppose it. His work in the Chesapeake finished, de Grasse had returned again, upon the surrender of Cornwallis, to his attack upon the British West Indies, and before another spring came he had reduced every English island of the Caribbean Sea except Jamaica, Barbadoes, and Antigua. An English fleet out of New York had attacked him at the capes of the Chesapeake, trying to break the trap into which Cornwallis had fallen, but had been beaten off. In May, 1781, a Spanish force had taken Pensacola and driven the English from Florida; and in February, 1782, a Spanish fleet captured Minorca, and a closer siege than ever was drawn about Gibraltar.

Finding herself at war with half the world, England had claimed the right to search neutral vessels on the high seas for goods belonging to her enemies, and to confiscate them when found; had claimed also the right to seize vessels trading with such of her ports as she had declared blockaded, whether she had actually blockaded them or not; and so had set the rest of the world against her. The northern states of Europe, headed by Russia, drew together in a league of "Armed Neutrality," determined to assert in force the doctrine that "free ships make free goods,"—a doctrine till then unasserted,—and to make effectual denial of the right to establish "paper blockades," created by proclamation and not by naval force; and the actual resistance of Dutch ships to her attempts to subject them to search forced England, in December, 1780, to make formal declaration of war against the Dutch Republic. Wars with the native princes of India had been heaped upon her other burdens since 1778, and France had sent a formidable armament thither, as she had sent an armament to America, at the moment of most critical danger, demanding that England relinquish everything except Bengal. It was no time to reconquer America.

Opinion as well as fortune had set against the further prosecution of the war against the colonies. At first opinion had seemed to sustain it. The nation, so far as any man could tell, believed it necessary and desirable that the colonies should be brought to obedience. But with the progress of the war opinion had veered. Uneasiness and disquiet had ensued, not merely because every campaign had ended in failure, but also because of the very fact of the war—a war against Englishmen, and upon questions which abode at home as well as in America. It was noteworthy that the country seemed to grow more and more dissatisfied with Parliament and with the subtile power of the King to rule in every turn of affairs. There began to be, for the first time in England, an articulate "public opinion," which was not the opinion of the Commons but an opinion uttered in mass meetings such as Mr. Wilkes’s friends had found out how to assemble and make use of. A great agitation arose for a reduction of the crown’s patronage and influence in Parliament, and for the regulation of official emoluments, in order that corruption might be prevented. In April, 1780, Mr. John Dunning, the Whig member for Calne, and from the first an avowed opponent of the war against the colonies, had actually carried through the House of Commons itself in the teeth of the ministers a resolution that "the influence of the crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished." Sudden mobs and tumults disturbed London with the swaying of opinion at every change of policy.

There were some men who saw what underlay the doubts and agitations and dismays of the time—who saw that the success of the English armies in America would mean such a danger to English liberty itself as they did not care to face,—the supremacy of the crown and of an unreformed Parliament. The Duke of Richmond had not hesitated to declare at the very outset of the war his hope that it would end in just such a crushing defeat as this which had now come at Yorktown. Yomig Pitt, great Chatham’s son, had denounced the war while yet Cornwallis seemed to move victorious in the South as "accursed, wicked, barbarous." Charles Fox clapped his hands at news of Washington’s final victory. Lord North had himself long ago lost heart in the business. He had wished to resign ever since the news of Burgoyne’s surrender; had kept his office against his will and better judgment because the King so urgently commanded him to keep it; and was heartily glad to get his release when at last the House itself yielded to opinion out-of-doors and voted that the war should stop.

A soldier led the dissatisfied Commons in their tardy revolt—the gentle Conway, who from the first had stood with Burke and the Rockingham Whigs as a champion of the cause of the Englishmen over sea. On the 27th of February, 1782, he triumphantly carried against the ministers the significant resolution, "That it is the opinion of this House that a further prosecution of offensive war against America would, under present circumstances, be the means of weakening the efforts of this country against her European enemies, and tend to increase the mutual enmity so fatal to the interests both of Great Britain and America," and on the 4th of March capped it with the still more trenchant resolution, "That the House will consider as enemies of his Majesty those who should advise or attempt a further prosecution of offensive war on the continent of North America." By the end of the month North was out, and Rockingham had once more taken office.

With this radical change in the spirit and motive of affairs at home came brighter news from abroad. In India the native princes had once more been brought to submission, and France had gained no advantage. Rodney had beaten de Grasse in the West Indies (April 12, 1782), in eleven hours of desperate fighting which had rendered the western seas no longer tenable for France had broken her naval power, and had made England safe of her mastery again on those contested coasts. Before the close of the year the combined forces of France and Spain had been obliged to abandon the siege of Gibraltar, which Spain had begun at the very outset of hostilities. It was, of course, no part of the personal triumph of the new ministers that the year in which they supplanted North was also the year in which the tide of victory turned, the year of England’s triumph over her European enemies. It was their task to make wise use of victory, and to reform the government which the King had corrupted and North had misused. In that their success was singularly immediate and extensive. By a rapid succession of measures they disqualified revenue officers from voting at elections and government contractors from sitting in the House of Commons, and cut in half the patronage of the crown. They were convinced, with Mr. Dunning, that the power of the crown had too much increased and ought to be diminished, in England no less than in America. It showed an extraordinary alteration in the temper of the Commons that they were able to diminish it so in which.

The lesson learned in America told upon the policy of the ministers in more ways than one. It led them to concede, among other things, an independent parliament to Ireland. There had been no soldiers to spare for the defence of Ireland when war threatened every coast and province of the empire; the Irish Protestants had mustered eighty thousand volunteers for their own defence; they could not now be refused the independent parliamentary action they had coveted.

But the chief fruit of the change of ministers was peace. Lord Rockingham lived but three months to preside over the counsels of peace and reformation he had so long wished to bring about. On the 2nd of July, 1782, Lord Shelburne became the head of the government, and some of the Rockingham Whigs refused to serve under his leadership. But the reconstitution of the ministry did not affect either its spirit or its policy. It had planned peace and was able to bring it about. France and Spain had but completed their bankruptcy by the war; England’s credit was secure. She could afford to continue the war; they could not. It was a mere matter of terms: England could almost dictate what they should be.

Peace must have seemed to Washington and Greene and Knox in the field, to the executive committees of the Congress at Philadelphia, to Franklin at Paris and John Adams at The Hague, like a beneficent providence rather than a thing earned by decisive victory. It was midsummer, 1782, before they could thoroughly credit those who told them of its certain approach. That supreme stroke at Yorktown having been delivered, everything fell slack; it seemed impossible to add anything, by way of making victory secure. There were still, it might be, some forty thousand British troops in America, reckoning all the posts from Canada round about, west and east, to the Gulf and the islands of the Indies. There were seventeen thousand in New York, and nearly seven thousand facing General Greene in the South. Having finished at Yorktown, Washington sent two thousand men to reinforce General Greene in South Carolina, and himself went promptly back to his post at Newburgh on the Hudson, to watch Clinton at New York, leaving Rochambeam and four thousand French troops at Williamsburg in Virginia, to guard the approaches of the Chesapeake. He was deeply anxious. He knew that the country had reached a point of utter exhaustion, lethargy, and disorganization. Not a recruit could he get. The troops were unpaid, unfed, only half clothed. He deemed the situation one of grave peril, and despaired presently of so much as keeping up appearances, knowing very well that the British were as well aware of his weakness as he was, and of the apathy and confusion of weak counsels that had fallen on the states. Clinton sent word to the ministers that if they would but send him ten thousand more men he would be responsible for the reduction of the country. Rodney presently cleared the coast of the French, and there was nothing to prevent fresh troops and supplies being sent as fast as the ministers wished to send them,—nothing but the ministers’ desire for peace, which Washington found it hard to credit.

But the new year confirmed the good news. The leaders of government in England had no doubt come to perceive very clearly how essentially impossible it was to conquer America, now that the alienation of feeling between the two countries was complete and final, and all thought of submission or accommodation but of the question. Their generals had seldom been beaten in battle, as it was. Burgoyne had won action after action in the northern forests only to find himself helpless at last. Howe had had his way easily enough at New York and on his expedition against Philadelphia. Cornwallis had moved freely, almost victoriously, into the trap at Yorktown. The unpalatable fact was, that British troops could control only so much of the country as they actually occupied, and that it was out of the question to occupy all of it. With Washington always at hand, always ready to strike, and always able to make the stroke tell, it was not safe even to attempt the maintenance of extended lines. At any rate England had grown weary of the unnatural business; the House of Commons had declared against the war; the new ministers were resolved to end it, even at the cost of granting America her independence; and it had become only a matter of terms.

In May, 1782, General Clinton was superseded at New York by General Sir Guy Carleton, who was instructed to assure the American commander-in-chief of the government’s determination to seek terms of peace, and who was of the noble spirit to like his errand. On the 11th of July the British garrison at Savannah was withdrawn and sent to New York. In August, Washington received from Carleton definitive assurances that the independence of the United States was to be conceded as a preliminary of peace, and in September the French who had remained in Virginia joined the Americans on the Hudson. In October they embarked at Boston for France. By the close of November (November 30,1782) a provisional treaty of peace had been agreed upon; and on the 14th of December Charleston was also evacuated, and the South left free of British troops. Carleton, when he felt that peace was indeed assured, began to disband the loyalist regiments enlisted in the British service and to despatch many of his regulars to the West Indies, to Nova Scotia, and to England. No one doubted any longer that the end of the bitter business had come at last; every one waited impatiently for the treaties which were to constitute its formal conclusion.

The actual formulation of peace, however, proved a matter of no small difficulty. America and France were bound together by the close and honorable ties of alliance; and France was in her turn allied with Spain, who now felt her interests to be by no means coincident with the interests of America. The Congress at Philadelphia explicitly commanded its comissioners "to be guided by the wishes of the French court." Dr. Franklin, Mr. John Adams, and Mr. John Jay, who bore its commission, were men of honor, and entertained, besides, a lively sense of the very deep obligations of the United States to France, for the money and the armed assistance in the field and upon the seas without which, apparently, their victory would have been impossible. It proved impracticable, nevertheless, to act with France; for she conducted herself, not as the ingenuous friend of the United States, but only as the enemy of England, and as first and always a subtile strategist for her own interest and advantage. The American commissioners would not be tricked and made use of, and came to terms separately, secretly, and for themselves with the English, their instructions notwithstanding. They did not make peace without their ally, but they would not accept terms of her arrangement.

The Count de Vergennes, her astute minister, had meant to devise a balance of power in America which might be made to redound to the advantage of France in Europe: had meant to support England in the exclusion of the Americans from the Newfoundland fisheries, and in her claim that the northern boundary of the United States should be the river Ohio, instead of the great lakes; to suggest the creation of a neutral zone of territory between the western settlements of the American States and the Mississippi, set apart for the Indians under the joint protection of the United States and Spain; and to stand with Spain for the utmost possible northward extension of the boundaries of Florida, which Spain had taken possession of. The American comissioners ignored him and got their own terms: The independence of the United States, a northern boundary at the great lakes, a western boundary at the Mississippi, and the use of the Canadian fisheries. Between the signing of the provisional and the signing of the definitive treaty the ministry of Lord Shelburne gave place to a coalition ministry under the Duke of Portland which brought North once more into office; but the course of the negotiations was not materially changed. The American commissioners got substantially all they had contended for (September 3, 1783).

The States had at last, moreover, a common government which could accept independence. On the 1st of March, 1781, Maryland had given her tardy assent to the Articles of Confederation, on the understanding that the States which had claims to territory in the west should as soon as possible relinquish them in favor of the newly formed government. On the 14th of January, 1784, the Congress of the Confederation, not yet two years old, ratified the treaty of peace.

A burst of heady indignation followed the publication of the terms of the treaty. It was well enough that the United States should have their independence, of course, and their proper boundaries, and that the immemorial right of their people to fish in the Canadian waters should be retained; but there were other articles in the treaty which gave almost universal dissatisfaction. The Confederation bound itself to urge upon the States unconditional amnesty for the loyalists and a complete restoration of their estates and civil rights, and to prevent so far as possible any legal obstacles being put in the way of the collection of the debts due British merchants at the outbreak of the war. Dr. Franklin had very candidly explained to the British commissioners that the Congress of the Confederation had no power to enforce these articles: that it could only advise the States, and that they would be free to follow or to disregard its advice as they pleased; and they did disregard it entirely and even scornfully, being bent upon vouchsafing to the loyalists neither property nor rights of any kind, and upon virtually wiping out all debts owed to Englishmen.

The Confederation, in fact, furnished the country with no real government at all. The Articles explicitly reserved to each State "its sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The general Congress had, it is true, powers which made it seem like a veritable government with respect to all dealings with foreign states, in the making of war and the conclusion of peace, in the maintenance of land and naval forces for national defence, and in the raising of loans on the faith and credit of the United States. It was authorized, too, to act as absolute arbiter of disputes between the States, to establish and regulate post offices, to determine the alloy and the value of all coin struck either by its own authority or by the authority of the States, to fix the standard of weights and measures, and to regulate all dealings with the Indian tribes. But it had absolutely no power to lay taxes of any kind. It was to get its means of support by requisition on the States—by requests which it had no right to transmute into commands. The Confederation had no Executive but only its talkative Congress, in which the States big and little had an equal voice: which could decide no important matter without the concurrence of at least nine out of the thirteen little commonwealths which had but just now formed the jealous partnership. Its Congress was but a board of advice; and its advice could be ignored with impunity.

The common affairs of the country had therefore to be conducted as the revolution itself had in fact been conducted,—not by the authority or the resolutions of the Congress, but by the extraordinary activity, enterprise, and influence of a few of the leading men in the States who had union and harmonious common effort at heart. The revolution may almost be said to have been carried forward by private correspondence,—by the impulse of conviction, the urgency of argument, the clear interpretation of signs of the times, the ceaseless persuasion planning, instigating of the letters of men like Washington, Knox, Greene, Schuyler, Hamilton, Henry, Franklin, Livingston, Madison, Jefferson, Hancock, Morris, Jay, Gadsden, the Lees, the Adamses,—a handful of men in each State who kept every one within reach of their letters or their voices reminded, in season and out of season, of the happenings, the dangers, the hopes, the difficulties, the duties of the time, stimulating those in authority, checking those in opposition, arousing those who were indifferent. This, rather than the work of formal committees of correspondence, had kept action awake and made it vital.

The Congress had talked ineffectually enough, and done nothing, at many a critical moment; had given way to the influence of petty provincial factions and listened to unworthy intrigues, while men not in its membership were carrying affairs forward without it. John Adams himself had too readily joined the silly talk of that disconcerted body when it grew impatient of Washington’s "Fabian policy" in the face of overwhelming odds. "My toast," he had cried, "is a short and a violent war!" Samuel Adams, too, had seemed once and again, in that demoralizing atmosphere of debate without action, to show only his petty gifts of management without a touch of broad or generous temper. Even Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, had critizised the sorely tried commander-in-chief’s "delays" at the very time when Washington’s letters were being hurried through the country along more lines of power than the Congress had ever had use of, persuading men and States to do what the Congress vainly suggested. The impotency, the occasional sheer imbecility, of the only common council the country yet had had been offset and made up for by the singular assiduity and faithfulness in personal effort of the real leaders of opinion in the States. The States had been remiss enough, as it was, in supplying their quotas of men and money and stores; they would have been still more remiss had not their leading spirits cried shame upon them and excited them in some measure to a performance of their duty.

When peace came it proved more difficult than ever to induce the States to act, or even seriously to take counsel, in the common interest. They had made the Confederation, but they were not interested in it. They were engaged in setting their own affairs in order after the long disquieting years of revolution and war which had brought such sad havoc upon their old-time ordinances and ways of life. Passion had run hot while the war lasted. It was not easy to put a term at once upon the license or upon the distempers which such a time had produced so rankly. Not a little poise, not a little of the sentiment of law, not a little of the solidity of tradition and the steadiness of established ways of thought and action, not a little of the conservative strength of the young communities had gone out of the country with the loyalists,—not a little of the training, the pride of reputation, the compulsion of class spirit, the loyalty and honor of a class accustomed to rule and to furnish rulers. There was an added unsteadiness in affairs because in so many places new men, and radical, were at the front in all public business.

Those who had adhered to the old order had made their way out of the revolted States in almost incredible numbers, as the issue of the war approached and became certain. Throughout the latter part of 1782 and all of 1783 they had poured out of the country in a veritable flight, knowing themselves proscribed and ruined, and not daring to wait for the actual evacuation of the English. Out of the southern country they made their way in ever-increasing numbers into Spanish Florida, or took ship to Bermuda or the British West Indies. Those who were within reach of Canada set out northward through the forests to seek a refuge there, following the rough, uncleared trails and the water-courses, with pack horse and boat, as in the old days of the first settlement of the continent out of Europe, abandoning home and property to escape contumely and the unspeakable hardship of being outlawed and hated in the communities of their own birth and breeding. Thousands upon thousands crowded to New York to seek the shelter of the British arms. It was the 25th of November, 1783, before Sir Guy Carleton could effect the final evacuation of the city, so great and so troublesome was the pitiful company of refugees for which he felt himself obliged in mere compassion to provide protection and transportation. More than twenty-nine thousand refugees (including three thousand negroes) left the State of New York alone, for Canada, during that confused and anxious year 1783.

Most of these had taken no active part in the struggle which had rendered them homeless. Almost without exception they had been, in opinion, as thoroughly opposed as their neighbors to the policy of the King and Parliament towards the colonies. But they had not been willing to go the ugly length of rebellion and of outright separation from England. When it came to the final breach, some of them had become not merely passive but active opponents of revolution and independence. The more partisan had taken up arms for the King. First and last, during the five years of the fighting, there had been no fewer than twenty-five thousand loyalists enlisted in the British service. At one time (1779) they had actually outnumbered the whole of the continental muster under the personal command of Washington. Most of those, however, who would not join the patriot party had been quiet non-combatants, and had been opponents of the revolution only in opinion. When the war was over the men who spoke the mind of the majority and who accordingly controlled policy in the new States refused to make any distinction between those who had taken up arms and those who had not. In their eyes they were all alike "Tories" and traitors; and many an excess of persecution and spoliation, many a wanton insult, many an act of mere vengeance darkened the years which immediately followed the war ;increasing the bands of exiles and adding in an incalculable measure to the bitterness which was throughout generations to mark the feeling of Canadians for their southern neighbors.

It was but human nature that it should be so. No one could wonder that civil war had brought these too familiar things in its train. The bitterest words of the great Washington himself were uttered against the Tories. Even with his splendid moderation and poise of mind, he could not find it in his heart to forgive the men who had seemed to fill every country-side his army entered with intrigue and threat of treason to the cause he had given his life to. The best Virginians had chosen as he had chosen: he could not imagine how good men or true patriots anywhere could choose otherwise. It was part of the almost universal demoralization produced by the war that every sentiment should now exhibit its excess, every reaction prove dangerously violent. There was everywhere a sort of moral exhaustion; a relaxation of the very principles of just and temperate government which the war had been fought to vindicate; a loss of tone, an access of perilous agitation.

The war had brought many things in its train calculated to work distress and to throw both morals and business into confusion. For one thing, it had saddled the country with an almost incalculable burden of debt. The individual States, the general Congress, towns, private persons even, had strained their credit to the utmost to meet the engagements and defray the expenses of a season during which business was often-times quite suspended and the ordinary sources of income absolutely dried up. The States and the Congress alike had resorted to the demoralizing expedient of issuing paper money which they could not redeem. Its bulk had, of course, increased from year to year, and its value had as rapidly declined. The continental money in particular had fallen so in value that the commodity must have been valueless indeed which fell under the reproach of being "not worth a continental."

It was the good fortune of the Confederation to have Robert Morris, one of the most distinguished, honorable, and successful merchants of Philadelphia, in charge of its treasury during the critical years of the final reckonings of the war (May, 1781, to April, 1785),—a man who had large means to pledge and who would pledge them to the last farthing to raise a sum of money upon an exigency, as Washington had done for the pay of his troops before Trenton. Mr. Morris had himself supplied almost everything that was needed for the victorious campaign which culminated at Yorktown, borrowing twenty thousand dollars in gold of Count de Rochambeau, upon his personal credit, to do it. But even Morris, trained merchant and financier that he was, could not make something out of nothing. The States would not tax their people for the support of the Confederation. It took eighteen months to collect one-fifth of the taxes assigned them in 1783. They neglected, sometimes even bluntly refused, to pay so much as their allotted shares of the interest on the national debt. The Confederation could not, of course, borrow under such circumstances. It was threatened with a mere unhonored lapse of all its powers and even of its very existence, for want alike of respect and support. The war had cost the Confederation more than ninety-two million dollars, reckoned in specie. France alone had spent sixty millions for America in loans and the support of armies. The States had added an expenditure of quite twenty-one millions more out of their own treasuries or their own credit. No wonder the men in responsible charge of public affairs in America rejected with a touch of bitter passion the demand of the treaty of peace, that they should, in addition to all this, restore to the loyalists the property they had lost, and pay to British merchants debts which antedated the war.

Trade, apparently, could not recover from the blow it had received by reason of the long continuance of hostilities. It was likely to be worse, indeed, now that the war was over, than it had been while the war lasted. While the war lasted ship owners could at least use their craft as privateers, to bring in cargoes not consigned to them. Seamen had found infinitely more adventure and not much less profit in their profession during those lawless years than formerly. But when peace came the ports of the British West Indies, once open to them, became foreign ports and were closed against them. Productive industry had too long stood still and there was little or nothing to sell in exchange for the English goods every one needed and all bought who could. A war of tariffs succeeded the war of arms,—a war in which each State acted for itself. The Congress of the Confederation could not regulate trade,—that was not one of its powers. It could arrange no national policy. It could neither retaliate upon foreign governments nor make bargains of reciprocity with them. Each State studied its own interest and knew not how to advance even that successfully. American, commerce had everywhere the worst of it.

It had been one of the unhappy omens of the time that the Confederation had had to reckon the disbandment of its own army one of the most serious difficulties attending the establishment of peace, and had had reason to feel relieved when it had at last got rid of it. During those last tedious months which intervened between the surrender at Yorktown and the formal conclusion of peace the idle soldiers had felt, more keenly even than in days of movement and war, the constant privations to which they were subjected. There had been times when some of them had been obliged to keep all day within their tents because absolutely without clothes to wear in which they could decently walk abroad. Their pay was almost never forthcoming; and they thought from time to time that they had good reason to suspect that the Congress meant to disband them and send them home without it. Their very idleness fostered an in humor among them, for there was nothing but the very bitter grievances to think about. The neglect they suffered naturally seemed to them an intolerable indignity; and they broke here and there into actual mutiny, their officers hardly restraining them.

Their officers, indeed, went, some of them, a little beyond mutiny, to the borders of treason, at any rate in their wish and purpose. In the spring of 1782 a letter from one of the most respected and trusted of his officers had intimated to Washington the willingness of the army to make him king, master of the country, dictator,—anything he would,—in order that the futile government of a group of petty republics might give place at least to order and efficiency. Washington’s reply had run hot in every sentence with scornful indignation that any one should dare to deem him capable of proving himself a traitor and an adventurer; but it had been reported from his camp ere the year ended that he was steadily losing his hold upon the affection of the army by the harshness with which he acted against everything that looked like a breach either of law or of discipline in bringing the army’s claims to the attention of the Congress or of the States. In the spring of 1783 there was a movement among his officers to force their claims upon the Congress which it required every gift of wise control and patient persuasion he was master of to hold back from lawlessness and open disloyalty. It was with no small sense of relief, therefore, that the country witnessed at last the peaceful disbandment of the troops (November 5,1783). The Congress had, happily, in the end been able to satisfy them, at any rate in part, in the matter of their pay; and had not waited even for the evacuation of New York by the British (November 25,1783) to get them safely dispersed to their homes.

Here our general authorities are the sixth volume of Bancroft and his History of the Constitution; the third volume of Hildreth; the first volume of George Tucker’s History of the United States; the fourth volume of Bryant and Gay’s Popular History of the United States; John Fiske’s Critical Period of American History; George Ticknor Curtis’s History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution, and The Constitution of the United States and its History, in the seventh volume of Winsor’s warrative and Critical History of America; Justin Vinsor’s The Confederation, 1781-1789, in the same volume of Vinsor; the fourth volume of W. F. H. Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth Century; the first volume of John Bach McMaster’s History of the People of the United States; James Kent’s Commentaries on American Law; and Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.

The sources for the period are to be found, as before, in the published forks, letters, and correspondence of the leading characters of the time on both sirles the water, especially in such intimate views of affairs as are to be found in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia and in Madison’s Notes in the Madison Papers; the Journals of Congress and the Secret Journals of Congress; Jonathan Elliot’s Debates on the Federal Constitution, including the Madison Papers; Noah Webster’s Sketches of American Policy; Pelatiah Webster’s Dissertation on the Political Union; and Brissot de Warville’s Examen Critique (1784) and New Travels in the United States, performed in 1788.