The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources, Part 21

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897. cn
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Boston ; New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Co.
Number of Pages: 622


USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 21


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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51


, Thus the most serious risk of the peace came from that State which, in her territorial extension, claimed to have gained most by the persistent efforts of the peace commissioners to carry the Republic's bounds to the Mississippi.


There was another British plea for the retention of the west- ern posts which had far less justification. The American com- missioners had resolutely refused to guarantee any compensa- tion to loyalists for their losses, and the British agents had as persistently refused to make reparation for private property of the patriot party destroyed during the war. It was Jay's opinion that " Dr. Franklin's firmness and exertion " on the American side did much to maintain their ground. All which the American commissioners would concede was in the fifth article of the treaty, that Congress should recommend to the


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THE TORIES.


several state assemblies to repeal their confiscation acts, and make such restitution of property already confiscated as they could consistently. The sixth article, however, required that there should be no future confiscations or persecutions, - a pro- vision which, it must be confessed, was subjected by some, as Hamilton said, to a " subtle and evasive interpretation."


The American people naturally rated the Tories by the worst of them, and how little sympathy there was for them can be con- ceived from Franklin's statement of their case: "The war against us was begun by a general act of Parliament declaring all our States confiscated, and probably one great motive to the loyalty of the royalists was the hope of sharing in these confis- cations. They have played a deep game, staking their estates against ours, and they have been unsuccessful." " As to the Tories," said Jay, " who have received damage from us, why so much noise about them and so little said or thought of Whigs, who have suffered ten times as much from these same Tories ?" Carleton, with undue haste, had pressed Congress to do what had been promised for it; but Livingston replied that no action could be taken till the articles of peace were ratified, when, as he alleged, the recommendation of Congress would be received with more respect, after the " asperities of the war shall be worn down." When Lady Juliana Penn appealed to Jay for the restoration of her rights in Pennsylvania, he replied (December 4, 1782) : "There is reason to expect that whatever undue degree of severity may have been infused into our laws by a merciless war and a strong sense of injuries will yield to the influences of those gentler emotions which the mild and cheerful season of peace and tranquillity must naturally excite." The recommendation called for by the treaty was in due time made by Congress, but the States, having the matter in their own discretion, showed no inclination to favor the loyalists.


The commissioners, who were aware that the terms of the treaty in this respect were considered in Europe "very humili- ating to Britain," insisted, in a communication to Congress (September 10, 1783), that the provisions of the treaty should be carried out " in good faith and in a manner least offensive to the feelings of the king and court of Great Britain, who upon that point are extremely tender. The unseasonable and unne- cessary resolves of various towns on this subject," they added,


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THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.


"the actual expulsion of Tories from some places, and the avowed implacability of almost all who have published their sentiments about the matter, are circumstances which are con- strued, not only to the prejudice of our national magnanimity and good faith, but also to the prejudice of our government." Nevertheless, the States were content to feel, as apparently Franklin in his heart felt, that the recommendatory clause of the treaty was simply embodied to dismiss the matter, and, if any relief was to be afforded the loyalists, there was naturally a general acquiescence in the belief that their relief should wait the withdrawal of the British forces. The fate that should then befall them was perhaps expressed as considerately as was likely to be the case in what Jay wrote : "I think the faithless and cruel should be banished forever and their estates confiscated ; it is just and reasonable. As to the residue, who have either upon principle openly and fairly opposed us, or who from timidity have fled from the storm and remained inoffensive, let us not punish the first for behaving like men, nor be ex- tremely severe to the latter because nature had made them like women."


So the debts and the loyalists were made by the British min- istry to justify as best they could the retention of these lake posts for the next twelve years, with all the repression which it implied upon the development of the northwest, which amounted, in Hamilton's opinion, to the value of £100,000 a year.


Two or three months after the preliminaries of peace had been received, Congress, with the same precipitancy which char- acterized Carleton in urging action about the loyalists, in- structed Washington to arrange with Haldimand for the same speedy transfer of these posts at the west and on the lakes as had been made of the port of New York. The stations in question were those at Mackinac, Detroit, Wabash, Miami, Fort Erie, Niagara, Oswego, and a few minor points, including two on Lake Champlain. The post at Detroit carried with it some two or three thousand neighboring inhabitants, and there were, in addition. some other settlers near Dutehman's Point. Accordingly, on July 12, 1783, Washington wrote to Haldimand and dispatched Steuben with the letter. On August 3, the American general, having reached Chambly, sent his credentials


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THE INDIANS AND THE TREATY.


forward, and Haldimand hastened to the Sorel to meet him. It was then that Haldimand, with great civility, orally declined to discuss the matter without definite orders from his superiors, and a few days later took the same position in letters which he addressed to Steuben and to Washington. The English general also declined to allow Steuben to proceed to an inspection of the posts. Steuben later told the president of Congress that in his opinion the British were " planning their schemes in Canada for holding the frontier posts for a year or two longer."


Hartley, indeed, had anticipated in the course of the nego- tiations at Paris, as has been shown, that the Indians would find themselves by the treaty " betrayed into the hands of that people against whom they had been incited to war," and that it was as necessary to treat them warily as it was that pro- vision should first be made for the traders. Already, in August, 1783, the British traffickers at the upper posts had complained of American interference with their profits in a trade which was known to be worth £50,000, in the region beyond Lake Superior. A little later the Montreal merchants represented that the trade of Mackinac comprised three quarters of the entire trade in the Mississippi valley between 39° and 60° of latitude. The finest fur country was represented to be that south of Lake Superior, but here hardly a quarter of its pos- sible yield was secured, owing to the irascibility of the Sioux. Well might Frobisher, one of the leading traders, contend that it would be a "fatal moment " when the posts were given up. Hartley's reasons for delay in surrendering this trade were precisely those now advanced by Haldimand in reporting his action to Lord North, and he was doubtless right in alleging that undue haste might incite the savages about the posts to war, while the traders dependent on them needed time to close their accounts. After waiting nearly a year for such molli- fying and conclusive effects, Haldimand on his part in April, 1784, asked instructions from Lord North ; and Knox, on the other hand, on May 12, 1784, was ordered to make a new demand, and sent Colonel Hall, who in July was dismissed by Haldimand with the same courtesy, because no orders to sur- render the posts had been received. Previous to this, on April 9, Great Britain had ratified the definitive treaty, as Congress had done on January 14 preceding, and in August Haldimand


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THIE INSECURITY OF THIE NORTHWEST.


was in possession of the verified document. It was now appar- ent that the issue had become a serious one. The question was not only upon the language of the treaty, " with all convenient speed," but also upon the propriety of considering the provi- sional or the definitive treaty as the true date for release. The Atlantic ports had indeed been given up after the provisional treaty, but that was an act of mutual convenience. It was Hamilton's opinion that the practice of nations in similar cases was not decisive ; while the United States had seemed to agree to the longer period by deferring its legislative recommenda- tions till after the final treaty had been ratified.


It has sometimes been alleged that the retention of the posts was simply an expedient to force the Americans to make such terms with the Indians as the British commissioners had failed to make by the treaty, and possibly to gain some vantage- ground in case there might be a further rectification of the frontier.


The relation of the frontiers with the tribes was certainly a critical one, and largely because of the neglect of the Indian interests by the British. Patrick Henry was urging at this time an amalgamation of races, and he desired to have bounties offered for half-breed children as a means of pacification ; but there was generally greater faith in muskets. General Jedediah Huntington was now recommending to Washington the sending of some five or six hundred regulars to the frontiers, for the military situation in the west was looking serious. At the peace, according to Pickering's estimate, it had been thought that more than eight hundred troops would be necessary to garrison the entire frontier, north, west, and south. That officer had then assigned one hundred and twenty men to Niagara, "the most important pass in America," sixty to Detroit, and one hundred to the farther lake posts. In June, 1784, Monroe urged Con- gress to be prepared to maintain a western force ; but all he could accomplish was to secure some seven hundred twelve- months' militia from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, to protect the frontier.


Indian ontrages were renewed on the frontiers in the spring of 1783, and in April, Dickinson of Pennsylvania was moving Congress to take some effective steps. On May 1, Congress ordered that the northwestern tribes should be officially in-


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THE FUR TRADE.


formed of the terms of the peace, and one Ephraim Douglas was sent to Detroit. De Peyster, the British commander at that post, was found by Douglas to have given the Indians the impression that the posts were still to be retained by the Brit- ish. On July 6, in the presence of the American agent, De Peyster urged the Indians to be quiet, and told them that he could no longer keep them, and gave Douglas an opportunity to explain the treaty. A few days later, Douglas went to Niagara, where General MeLean was now feeding three thousand Indians, and there had an interview with Brant. This chieftain disclosed that the Indian lands must be secured to the tribes before any treaties could be made. Douglas reported to General Lincoln, now secretary of war, that he was neither permitted to accom- pany Brant to the Mohawk villages, nor to address the Indians. Simon Girty, who was De Peyster's interpreter, served in the same capacity later for Sir John Johnson, when another confer- ence was held with the Indians at Sandusky, and Jolinson warned them not to permit the Americans to occupy their lands. It was advice which led to many difficulties, though Congress itself was not without responsibilities for the long and harassing conflict which followed upon their occupation of the territory north of the Ohio, though it may be claimed that the results were worth the cost. " As to originating the Indian war," said Boudinot, ten years later, while president of that body, " so far from its being originated by Great Britain, I know that it originated in the false policy of Congress in 1783; I foretold it then, with all its consequences."


It is necessary now to broaden our survey somewhat in order to understand better the real reasons which had induced Haldi- mand to devise a plan for retaining the posts, - a scheme into which the ministry easily entered. "Who are these mighty and clamorous Quebec merchants ?" exclaimed William Lee, when the news reached Brussels in February, 1783, that they were complaining of the peace. It was, in fact, these Cana- dian fur traders who saw in the concessions of the bounds which had been made in the treaty that their traffic could no longer be protected from the rivalry of the Americans. As Brissot reckoned, the annual sales in furs at London, coming from Canada, amounted for a few years succeeding the peace to


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THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.


about five million " livres tournois." "It is from this consider- ation," he adds, " that the restitution of these forts is withheld." It was supposed at the time that one of the objects in prolong- ing British intrigues with the disaffected Vermonters, so as to detach them from the Union, was, as Hamilton expressed it, to " conduce to the security of Canada and to the preservation of the western posts."


The British furthermore felt that these American rivals would find no longer any obstacles to their wish to open an inter- oceanic channel of trade. Carver tells us of a purpose which had been entertained by the Atlantic colonists, before the outbreak of the Revolution, to send an expedition under Colonel Rogers to- wards the Pacific, with the expectation of discovering the long- hidden Straits of Anian. The clash of arms had prevented the fulfillment. While the war was progressing, however, the English government had sent Captain Cook on his famous voyage, with instructions (1776) to make the Pacific coast at 45° north lati- tude, and to follow it north to 65°, in the hopes of finding that long-sought strait, for the discovery of which the British gov- ernment had recently offered a reward of £20,000. Little was then known of what Spain had already done on that same coast, for the Spanish flag had really been shown above 42° and up to 50°, while Haceta had actually surmised the existence of the Columbia in 1775.


When Cook, at Nootka Sound, saw the natives tremble at the noise of his guns, he was convinced that the Spaniards had not already accustomed them to ordnance. He himself missed the Straits of Juan de la Fuca, but by recording the presence of the sea otter in those waters, he intimated a future industry of the region. His journals were not published till 1784-85 ; but a brief official report had already been made public, which John Ledyard, a Connecticut adventurer, used in preparing an account of the voyage, published at Hartford (1783) just at the close of the war. Ledyard had been a corporal of marines on Cook's ship. It was an indication of the interest, since the pressure of war had been removed, which was taken in adven- turous traffic that Ledyard, eager to be the first to open trade on the northwest coast, now engaged the attention of Robert Morris in his plans. Ledyard was through life the sport of freakish fortune, and no effort of his could mould the passing


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NORTH WEST COMPANY.


encouragement even of Morris into practical shape, and he went to Europe to enter new fields. Jefferson, then the Ameri- can minister at Paris, feeling him to be " a person of ingenuity and information, but unfortunately of too much imagination," gently encouraged him, and Ledyard started to pass through Russia and approach his goal by way of Kamschatka. Sir Joseph Banks, who had encountered him, had reached a high opinion of him, and thought him the only person fitted for such an exploration. His attempt failed, and it was left for some Boston merchants, a few years later, to accomplish by a voyage around Cape Horn the preemption of the valley of the Columbia, to become the goal of fur-trading competitors.


An organized effort on the part of the British merchants had been made in 1783, just at the time when the retention of the posts was under consideration, by the formation of the North West or Canada Company. This trading organization almost immediately started up rival companies. Some bloody contests in the wilderness followed between their respective pioneers, which were ended only by their combining in 1787. Sepa- rately, and later jointly, the trading instincts of these associates pushed adventurers on the one hand up the Ottawa and so to the Peace River, and by the Mackenzie to the Arctic seas ; and on the other hand ultimately to and beyond the Rockies. By 1785, they had begun to plant the British flag north of the Mississippi and upon the Missouri, as well as on the lesser of the upper affluents of the main river. The headquarters of these operations were maintained on that portage, between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods, which the treaty had just made the line of boundary of the new Republic, in ignorance of the real ultimate source of the Great Lakes in the springs of the river which enters Lake Superior at Duluth. A correct knowledge of geography would in reality have lost the United States a large part of the modern Minnesota. The traffic along this treaty route was conducted with a policy too like that which had enfeebled New France on the same soil, to insure an equal contest with the American settler in the later struggle for the possession of the Columbia valley. There was, however, on the part of some, a conception that American enterprise must seek its channel to the Pacific and the nations beyond not so much in the north, in conflict with the British, as in the south, in the rivalry of the Spanish.


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THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.


By the time that Carleton had withdrawn (November, 1783) the British troops from the Atlantic coast, it had become apparent to the British government, on the prompting of the merchants of Canada, that the conditions of the peace were far from favorable to that elass of subjects. These trading combinations had of late been extending their operations from Detroit and Mackinac as centres, and their movements had eonduced to the founding of Milwaukee and other new posts on and beyond the lakes. A later attempt to carry a larger vessel than had before been used on Lake Superior through the rapids at the Sault failed ; but with such eraft as still sailed on those waters, the volume of the trade was large, and more than half of it was conducted by the merchants, through the posts which rightfully fell to the Americans by the treaty and were still in British hands. Hamilton put it more strongly, and said that by surrendering half the lakes, England quit- claimed a much larger part of the fur trade. Of the two thou- sand troops now holding Canada, less than eight hundred occupied the posts from Oswego westward, while less than four hundred held Lake Champlain and its approaches. Preserving the posts by such a force as this, it was hoped to prevent the transfer of allegianee to the new Republic of the allied mer- chants, who might otherwise prefer to eling to their profits under the new Republic rather than to their birthright without them. It was, perhaps, safe to trust to the future for some vindication of a refusal to give up these stations, and the delay had convinced the traders that there was no immediate need of discovering other portages to the far West, as at first they had begun to do. Thus not only were mercantile interests to be served, but pride also, for there was a growing sense of mor- tification at the loss by the treaty of the principal carrying places, and the hope was entertained that some reetifieation of the boundary might yet be possible, through the failure of the American government to maintain itself, as was indeed later attempted by those who negotiated a treaty with Jay in 1794. In arguing the question of priority of infractions, the British agents claimed that, until the ratifications of the treaty were exchanged in May. 1784, it was not ineumbent on the British government to issue orders to evacuate the posts, and that such orders, if issued then, could not have reached Quebee before


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THE LOYALISTS.


July, 1784, and that prior to this the American States had enacted laws impeding the collection of the British debts.


The fact is, however, that the British policy had been deter- mined even before the two governments had respectively rati- fied the definitive articles, for the day before Parliament con- firmed the treaty, Sydney had sent instructions to Haldimand, which reached him before June 14, 1784, to hold fast to the posts. It is thus certain that a month before the time came for relieving the British government of an imputation of un- fairness, this action was taken. If it was not an infraction of the treaty, then no enactment of the American States, anterior to the same date, could be held to be such. The facts are, that both sides were faithless, and practically by acts of even date ; nor was there any disposition on either side to undo promptly what had been done, when both sides were fully informed of the ratification. The motives in both cases were those of mer- cantile gain.


The retention of the posts meant a profit to the English in excess of what would be gained by the possession of New York, and larger than any possible loss by repudiation of the debts.


When Governor Clinton of New York, after Congress had ratified the treaty, demanded the evacuation of Oswego and Niagara by sending, in March, 1784, an agent who made the demand at Quebec in May, Haldimand, who did not, as it turned out, get word of the British ratification till the following August, would not recognize the right of a single State to make such a demand ; and as if to screen the real object of the posts' retention, intimated that the posts might not be surrendered at all, if the claims of the loyalists were not better respected. In August, that general was pointedly warned by his superiors to refrain from such explanations, and in November, he left his successor, St. Leger, instructions to observe the same warning.


Jay, on September 6, 1785, when the loyalists were moving into Ontario almost by thousands, notified John Adams that " some of the loyalists advise and warmly press the detention of the posts ; " but when, in the latter part of 1785, Adams, then the American minister in London, first learned officially of the grounds for still holding the post, it was not ascribed to the neglect of the loyalists, but accounted a means of securing payment of the debts.


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THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.


When Haldimand, in making answer to the demand for the posts within the jurisdiction of New York, had referred to the loyalists, their fate had long been uppermost in his mind. By August, 1783, the pioneers of this expatriated body were beginning to reach Canada from New York in large numbers, to seek for new homes. Dunmore, while the negotiations for peace were going on, had proposed to settle these faithful sub- jects on the Mississippi, with a view of using them from that base in continuing the war, just as Washington at one time had looked beyond the mountains to find an asylum if irretrievable disaster overtook him on the sea coast. But the peace had changed all. Franklin and his associates would not listen to any scheme of making the confederation responsible for the security of the loyalists, while there was no provision for which the English commissioners had contended so steadfastly, and if Jay was correct in his assurance to Livingston, December 12, 1782, the British commissioners did not expect that restorations would be made to all that class. But their constancy had been of no avail, and the fortunes of the luckless Tories had been left to the uncertain consideration of the several States. There was nothing then left for the British commissioners to do but, in the choice of northern bounds which the Americans gave them, to select those which left the southern peninsula of Canada between Lakes Ontario and Huron in British hands. It was here, in a region which had been previously almost unoccupied, that it was now proposed to settle these unhappy refugees, though Haldimand, in November, 1783, recommended that a settlement be made near Cataraqui. Beside those who had come overland from New York in the summer of 1783, others left the same port by ship in the following autumn, to join such as had gone before. In the exodus it is supposed that about fifty thousand fled to Canada, and if the figures of the Tory, Judge Jones, can be trusted, there were one hundred thousand of these exiles who departed from New York to seek some asylum between March and November of that year (1783). Within a twelvemonth, there were certainly ten thousand of them who found their way to these upper Canadian lands, and some twenty thousand are known to have gone to the maritime provinces.




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