USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780 > Part 22
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Rutledge's protest would have prevailed. As it was, they doubtless greatly diminished the strength of the Revolu- tionary party, and had a most serious effect upon . the course of events in the State. The people of South Caro- lina, with the exception of a few extreme men, had now gained all that they demanded or desired. What was left unyielded was just what they did not desire - separation and independence.
But France had been watching the tide of affairs alike in England and America ; and with love for neither, she was determined to weaken her ancient adversary by preventing a reconciliation between the mother country and her colonies. The intention of the Court of Ver- sailles doubtless was to encourage the American colonists in their revolt by secret assurance of assistance, while abstaining from an open declaration or recognition of them until Great Britain and her colonies had mutually weakened each other. The surrender of Burgoyne, and the anticipated action of Great Britain looking to con- ciliation, forced the French court to throw off the mask and to act at once. As early as the 24th of December, 1777, treaties with the Americans were agreed upon ; but they were not formally signed till the 6th of February following.
In the beginning of March the Duke of Grafton in- formed the House of Peers that he had received well- attested intelligence that a treaty was concluded and actually signed between France and America, and de- manded from the ministers either an acknowledgment or denial of so important a matter. The ministers denied that they had any account of such an alliance having been formed or even intended ; but within a week after this declaration a message was sent to each House of Parlia- ment with the information that his Majesty had been
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informed by the French King that a treaty of amity and commerce had been signed by the Court of France and certain persons employed by his Majesty's revolted sub- jects in North America, and that his Majesty had thought proper in consequence to send orders to his minister to withdraw from that court.1 It was soon after this that the memorable scene of Chatham's dying speech took place in the House of Lords. He had but a short time before, - the day after Lord North had announced his intention of bringing in a bill of conciliatory measures, - when the attitude of the French was yet unknown, made one of his greatest speeches on the subject. Though now a complete invalid, he had several times during the last few months spoken in the House of Lords with little less than his old eloquence. America, he emphatically and repeatedly maintained, never could be subdued by force ; the continued attempt would only lead to utter ruin, and France would sooner or later inevitably throw herself into the contest. He strongly maintained, however, that England and America must remain united for the benefit of both, and that though every week which passed made it more difficult, and though the language of the ministers, and especially the employment of Indians, had enormously aggravated the situation, it was still possible by a frank and speedy surrender of all the constitutional questions in dispute, and by an immediate withdrawal of the invad- ing army, to conciliate the colonies. " All the Middle and Southern colonies," he maintained, "are still sound . . . still sensible of their real interests." The security and permanent prosperity of both countries could only be attained by union, and by that alone the power of France could be repressed. Prompt, conciliatory action was however necessary, and he accordingly strenuously op- 1 Bisset's Reign of George III, vol. III, 32.
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posed the adjournment over the holidays which left the country without a parliament in the six critical weeks that followed the arrival of the news of the capitulation of Saratoga.1 His counsel was rejected, and Parliament
took a recess. By the time Parliament reconvened the sands of his life had nearly run. But now that it was known that France had concluded a treaty with the colo- nies, and in the face of this the Marquis of Rockingham and his party were advocating the withdrawal of the armies from America and an immediate recognition of the independence of the colonies, he made one mighty effort to preserve the integrity of the empire of Great Britain. Richly dressed in a superb suit of black velvet, with a full wig, and covered up to the knees in flannel, supported on crutches, he was led into the House of Peers attended by his son-in-law Lord Mahon, and resting on the arm of his younger son William Pitt, who was des- tined in a few years to rival his father's fame. He was pale and emaciated, but the darting quickness, force, and ani- mation of his eyes and the expression of his whole counte- nance showed that his mind retained its perspicacity, brilliancy, and strength. The Lords stood up and made a lane for him to pass through to the bench of the Earls, and with the gracefulness of deportment for which he was so eminently distinguished, he bowed to them as he proceeded. Having taken his seat, he listened, we are told, with profound attention to the speech of the Duke of Richmond, the most vehement supporter of the neces- sity of admitting the independence of America ; then rising, he lamented, he said, that at so important a crisis his bodily infirmities had interfered so often with his regular attendance on his duty in Parliament. Then pro- ceeding : -
1 England in the Eighteenth Century (Lecky), vol. IV, 80.
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" I have this day," said he, " made an effort beyond the powers of my constitution to come down to the house, perhaps the last time I shall enter its walls, to express my indignation against the proposition of yielding the sovereignty of America. My Lords, I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon me, that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this noble and ancient monarchy. Pressed down as I am by the load of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjuncture ; but, my Lords, while I have sense and memory, I never will tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions. Shall a people so lately the terror of the world now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon ? It is impossible. I am not, I confess, well informed of the resources of this kingdom; but I trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, though I know them not ; and any state, my Lords, is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like men."
The Duke of Richmond declared his grief and horror at the dismemberment of the empire to be as great as that of any man in the House or nation ; but how was it to be avoided ? He himself was totally ignorant of the means of resisting with success the combination of America with France and Spain. He did not know how to preserve the dependence of America. If any man could prevent such an evil, Lord Chatham was the man ; but what, he asked, were the means that great statesman would propose ? Lord Chatham, agitated by this appeal, made an eager effort at its conclusion to rise, but before he could utter a word, pressing his hand to his heart, he fell down in a convulsive fit. The Duke of Cumberland and Lord Temple who were nearest him caught him in their arms. He was carried to an adjoining apartment, where medical assistance soon arrived. Recovering, he was taken in a litter to his villa in Kent, and there he lingered till the 11th of May, when he breathed his last in the seventieth year of his age.1
1 Bisset's Reign of George III, vol. III, 40-42.
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It has been no digression from the history of South Carolina to recall this great and tragic scene, for it was as much a part of her history as that of England. Chatham was the leader of politics in South Carolina as of the great Whig party in Great Britain. It was by his advice to resist taxation without representation even with their lives and fortunes that many, if not most of those who had gone into the war, had followed. It was with his approval that they were acting, and with that ap- proval they were assured they were but exercising their rights as Englishmen. They had acquiesced, it is true, in the Declaration of Independence as a war measure, but that they would gladly give up if only an accommodation, an honorable accommodation, could be had with the mother country. And it was upon his great strength which they in a great measure depended to secure for them this settlement -an accommodation against which neither Mid- dleton, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, nor Rutledge, who had approvingly announced it to the General Assembly, would now close the door. All this the people felt as, day by day, they passed and repassed his statue standing at the intersection of the two great thoroughfares of the town with outstretched arms de- manding their rights.1 But now he was dead, and had died protesting against the dismemberment of the ancient and noble monarchy, that is, against their separation from the dominion of England. This protest sank deep into the hearts of many a Carolinian.
But there was another point in this dying appeal of their great leader which touched them as deeply and as keenly, and this was his allusion to the House of Bourbon, for whose benefit they were now to abandon the mother
1 See account of the raising of the statue. Hist. of So. Ca. under Roy. Gov. (McCrady), 677-678.
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country. To the Carolinian of English descent, there was the inborn hatred and antipathy to the French. To the Huguenots, there was the same feeling of unkindness and resentment to France as that which the New Eng- landers entertained to old England. Both had been driven from their native country by persecution. But to the Carolinian, whether of English or Huguenot descent, there was superadded to these naturally hostile senti- ments a deadly hatred and fear of the French as their own mortal enemy on the frontier, from the settlement of the colony to the peace of 1763. Fifteen years was all too short a time to forget the Indian atrocities which had been instigated by the French. It was the French and Span- iards who had invaded the town in 1706, and it was the French whose influence had brought on the Cherokee war in 1760 and the massacre of the Calhouns at Long Canes. It was against the French and Indians in the Cherokee war that Laurens and Moultrie and Marion, under the British ensign, had learned their first lessons in war, and now they were to march with the tricolor against the flag of St. George! The leaders and statesmen might per- suade themselves to this upon grounds of policy, but the presence of French vessels in Charlestown harbor was to show how unpopular was the alliance.
On the 21st of April, 1778, Congress then sitting at Yorktown, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia being then in the possession of the British, received a letter from General Washington enclosing a printed paper from Philadelphia purporting to be copies of the three conciliatory acts which had been passed by Parliament. These papers were at once referred to a committee, which reported upon them the next day, declaring that the committee could not ascertain whether the contents of the paper which had been referred to them had been framed in Philadelphia or
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in Great Britain. But they were inclined to believe that they were genuine, for various reasons which they allege, and from which it appeared to the committee that the bills introduced in Parliament were intended to operate upon the hopes and fears of the good people of the States so as to create divisions among them and a defection from the common cause now by the blessing of Divine Providence drawing near a favorable issue. Upon which the com- mittee reported it as their opinion that as the Americans united in this arduous contest upon principles of common interest for the defence of common rights and privileges, which union had been cemented by common calamities and by mutual good offices and affection, so the great cause for which they contend and in which all mankind are interested must derive its success from the continu- ance of that union, wherefore any man or body of men who should presume to make any separate or partial con- vention or agreement with the commissioners under the Crown of Great Britain or any of them ought to be treated as open and avowed enemies of these United States. And the committee further reported it as their opinion that the United States could not with propriety hold any conference with any commissioners on the part of Great Britain unless they should as preliminary thereto either withdraw their fleets and armies, or else in positive and express terms acknowledge the independence of the States. They recommended that the States should be called upon to use the most strenuous exertions to have their respective quotas of continental troops in the field as soon as possible, and that all the militia of the States should be held in readiness to act as occasion might require. This report was unanimously agreed to, and was published.
The door was thus closed to the commissioners before
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they had sailed from England. The representatives in Congress from South Carolina at the time were Henry Laurens, Thomas Heyward, Jr., John Mathews, William Henry Drayton, and Richard Hutson. Henry Laurens was the President of Congress. Thus while John Rut- ledge and Arthur Middleton were refusing to adopt the Constitution which they thought put an end to the hope of reconciliation, Laurens and the other representative from the State in Congress were refusing to receive over- tures from England.
The South Carolina Gazette of the 21st of May an- nounced that it had been favored with Lord North's speech, introducing his new conciliatory measures with the report of the committee of Congress on the bill which would be published in an extra the next day. The extra accord- ingly appeared containing the conciliatory acts, Lord North's speech and the report of the committee, with this appropriate quotation from Edmund Burke's oration of March, 1775, as head-line : -
" Conciliation failing, force remains ; force failing, there is no further hope of conciliation. Power and authority may indeed be bought by kind- ness ; but they cannot be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence."
On May 26 the Gazette further announced that his Excellency the President had received an important dis- patch which was communicated to be published, to wit : that on Saturday, May 2d, Silas Deane had arrived at Con- gress, express from the American plenipotentiaries at the court of France, and had delivered his dispatches to his Excellency the President. These dispatches contained the treaties of alliance which had been formally signed on the 6th of February, whereby it had been agreed that if war should break out between France and Great Britain
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during the present war between the United States and England, that France and the United States should make it a common cause, and aid each other mutually with their good offices, their counsels, and their forces ; that the essential and direct end of the alliance was to maintain the liberty, sovereignty, and independence, absolute and unlimited, of the United States, and that each of the contracting parties would make all efforts in its power to attain this end. It was expressly stipulated that neither of the two parties should conclude either a truce or peace with Great Britain without the formal consent of the other first obtained ; and they mutually engaged not to lay down their arms until the independence of the United States should be formally or tacitly assured.
The conciliatory acts having been passed by the Brit- ish Parliament, Lord Carlisle, William Eden, and George Johnstone, Esq., were appointed commissioners under the great seal, and with the Admiral Lord Howe and his brother the General, Sir William Howe, or in the absence of the latter Sir Henry Clinton, were intrusted with the execution of the powers for settling the differences be- tween the mother country and her colonies. Of these the two first were very little known in politics, but after the Declaration of Independence Lord Carlisle had moved the address in answer to the royal speech which de- nounced the Americans as rebels and traitors, while Eden had been under secretary to Lord Suffolk, the most vehe- ment advocate of the employment of the Indians in the war. Johnstone had been a former Governor of Florida, and was well known and highly esteemed in America, and had been opposed to the ministerial measures relating to the colonies. These commissioners sailed for America on the 22d of April, but Silas Deane had arrived before them and had obtained two days after reaching Congress, to
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wit : on the 4th of May, the unanimous ratification of the treaties with France which he had brought. The French ambassador at London had before the British commis- sioners sailed notified the court of St. James of the en- gagements entered into between his sovereign and the American colonies, and some days after quitted London and returned to France, and about the same time the British ambassador quitted France ; though war was not actually declared, both kingdoms vigorously prepared for hostilities.
It was under such discouraging circumstances that the commissioners found themselves upon their arrival in America, but they nevertheless entered upon the execution of their offices with apparent alacrity. They dispatched their secretary Dr. Adam Ferguson, a distinguished philosopher and historian, to Yorktown, Pennsylvania, where the Congress was sitting, to lay before that body a copy of their commission with the conciliatory acts of Parliament upon which it was founded ; and a letter ex- plaining the extent of their powers and setting forth in detail the nature of the terms which they were authorized to offer, and asking Congress to appoint a place where the commissioners might meet them either collectively or by deputation for the further discussion of the subject. Dr. Ferguson was, however, denied a passport and was not suffered to proceed any farther than the first outpost of the American army. He thereupon returned to Phila- delphia, and that no delay might ensue the papers, of which he was intended to have been the bearer, were forwarded to Congress by letter by the ordinary military posts, and reached Yorktown on the 13th of June.
In this letter the commissioners declared that they were prepared to consent to a cessation of hostilities both by sea and land ; to restore free intercourse, to revive mutual affection, and renew the common benefits of natu- VOL. III. - S
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ralization through the several parts of the empire ; to extend every freedom to trade that our respective inter- ests can require ; to agree that no military forces should be kept up in the different States of North America without the consent of the general Congress or provincial assemblies ; to concur in measures calculated to discharge the debts of America, and to raise the credit and value of the paper circulation ; to perpetuate the union of Great Britain and the colonies by reciprocal deputation of agent or agents from the different States who should have the privilege of a seat and voice in Great Britain, or if sent from Britain to have a seat and voice in the assemblies of the different States, to which they may be deputed re- spectively in order to attend the several interests of those to whom they are deputed.
In short, the commissioners proposed, they said, to establish the power of the respective legislatures in each particular State, to settle its revenue, its civil and mili- tary establishment, and to exercise a perfect freedom of legislation and internal government, so that the British States throughout North America, acting with the people of Great Britain in peace and war under one common sovereign, may have the irrevocable enjoyment of every privilege that is short of a total separation of interests, or consistent with that union of force on which the safety of our common religion and liberty depends.
The commissioners proceeded to say : -
"In our anxiety for preserving those sacred and essential interests, we cannot help taking notice of the insidious interposition of a power which has from the first settlement of these colonies been actnated with enmity to us both. And notwithstanding the pre- tended date or present form of the French offers to North America, yet it is notorious that these were made in consequence of the plans of accommodation previously concerted in Great Britain, and with a view to prevent our reconciliation and to prolong the destructive war."
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The commissioners then went so far as to make this appeal : -
"But we trust that the inhabitants of North America connected with us by the nearest ties of consanguinity -speaking the same language, interested in the preservation of similar institutions, re- membering the former happy intercourse of good offices, and forget- ting recent animosities - will shrink from the thought of becoming an accession of force to our late mutual enemy and will prefer a firm, free, and perpetual coalition with the parent State to an insincere and unnatural foreign alliance." 1
To this letter Henry Laurens, who was now President of the Continental Congress, made answer on the 17th of June, signed by him upon the unanimous voice of that body, that nothing but an earnest desire to spare the further effusion of human blood could have induced them to read a paper containing expressions so disrespectful to his most Christian Majesty, the good and great ally of these States ; or to consider propositions so derogatory to the honor of an independent nation. The acts of the British Parliament, the commission from their sovereign, and their letter suppose the people of these States to be subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, and are founded on the idea of dependence, which was utterly inadmissible.
"I am further directed to inform your Excellencies," Mr. Laurens continued, " that Congress are inclined to peace, notwithstanding the unjust claims from which their war originated, and the savage manner in which it hath been conducted. They will, therefore, be ready to enter upon the consideration of a treaty of peace and commerce not inconsistent with treaties already subsisting when the King of Great Britain shall demonstrate a sincere disposition for that purpose. The only solid proof of this disposition will be an explicit acknowledg- ment of the independence of these States or the withdrawing his fleet and armies." 2
1 Ramsay's Revolution, vol. I, 395-400.
2 Ibid., 402.
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This answer would seem to have closed the door to any further negotiation ; but the commissioners, nevertheless, thought it necessary to reply to show that the failure of their mission was not in any way attributable to them. In their reply they stated that the last alternative, that of withdrawing the British fleets and armies, was inadmis- sible not only for the sake of guarding against the designs of the natural enemy of Great Britain, but for the safety of those who in America had taken an active part in favor of the mother country. But with respect to the first of the alternatives, they declared that if Congress by the inde- pendence of America meant no more than the entire privi- lege of the people of the continent to govern themselves without any reference to Great Britain, beyond what was necessary to preserve a union of force for the safety of the whole empire, such an independence had been already acknowledged in the first letter of the commissioners. But Congress took no further notice of this second letter than barely to enter a resolution upon their journal, import- ing that no answer should be given to it, as neither of the preliminary conditions -- that of an explicit acknowledg- ment of independence and withdrawal of fleet and armies - had been complied with.
Later, on the 7th of August, the commissioners sent in a remonstrance against what the British claimed was a violation on the part of the Americans of the terms of Burgoyne's surrender ; but Congress, instead of answer to this, transmitted to them a remonstrance on the conduct of Governor Johnstone, accompanied with a declaration that it was incompatible with the honor of Congress to hold any further communication with him. This charge was founded on letters written by Governor Johnstone to individual members of Congress, with some of whom he was personally acquainted, and for others of whom he had
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