Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

IX.

That the duties imposed by several late Acts of Parliament, from the peculiar circumstances of these colonies, will be extremely burthensome and grievous; and from the scarcity of specie [that is, due to the currency act], the payment of them absolutely impracticable.

X.

That as the profits of the trade of these colonies ultimately center in Great-Britain, to pay for the manufactures which they are obliged to take from thence, they eventually contribute very largely to all supplies granted there to the Crown.

XI.

That the restrictions imposed by several late Acts of Parliament, on the trade of these colonies, will render them unable to purchase the manufactures of Great-Britain.

XII.

That the increase, prosperity, and happiness of these colonies, depend on the full and free enjoyment of their rights and liberties, and an intercourse with Great-Britain mutually affectionate and advantageous.

XIII.

That it is the right of the British subjects in these colonies, to petition the King, Or either House of Parliament.

Lastly, That it is the indispensable duty of these colonies, to the best of sovereigns, to the mother country, and to themselves, to endeavour by a loyal and dutiful address to his Majesty, and humble applications to both Houses of Parliament, to procure the repeal of the Act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, of all clauses of any other Acts of Parliament, whereby the jurisdiction of the Admiralty is extended as aforesaid, and of the other late Acts for the restriction of American commerce.23

In essence, the colonists said they could not be taxed by Parliament without being represented in Parliament and then, lest the British resolve this complaint by granting them representation in Parliament, that “from their local circumstances [they] cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great-Britain.” What a beautiful catch-22 they attempted to construct if the British government were gullible enough to buy it: no taxation without representation but, given their great physical distance from Britain, they asserted that they could not be granted representation and hence, no taxation! They then went on to say, in clear reference to the Currency Act of 1764, that the accumulated costs of the defense of the colonies could not be borne directly by the colonists “from the scarcity of specie,” arguing that their commerce with Britain, to Britain’s great advantage, was the means by which the colonists had contributed to their defense. The leaders of colonial America—the very rich, landowners, such as George Washington—had agreed that they could not be made to shoulder any part of the economic burden of their own defense unless it were done by their own legislatures (which such men as Washington, from influential families, largely controlled). They would not tolerate their wealth being diminished by either the Currency Act or the Stamp Act. How remarakably and narrowly self-interested were these complaints.

On top of the actions of Parliament, George Washington found the representatives of the British monarch threatening to his own fortune in other ways. The land grants he had gained from his military role in the French and Indian War were at risk over a technicality. It was arguably the case that the award of land was aimed only at His Majesty’s regular soldiers and not militiamen whose commissions, like his, had no status in the English army. Indeed, Washington had complained throughout his early military career that he, as a colonel, was nevertheless susceptible to being commanded by a regular English captain; that is, a regular soldier of nominally lower rank. Likewise, he routinely objected that officers in colonial militias were paid much less than regular English officers of the same rank. He chose to overlook the fact that he had been commissioned by Robert Dinwiddie, who had no such legal authority. All this came to a head when the last royal governor of Virginia, John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, with whom Washington had a poor personal relationship, invoked the “technicality,” stripping Washington of his Kanawha lands in the Ohio Valley, lands that he was particularly attached to and that he believed would have great value, as they were at the fork of the Kanawha and Monongahela Rivers.24

Washington, like so many other wealthy, ambitious colonial leaders, found that British policy was creating an insufferable threat to his future prospects. His Virginia money was diminished in value; his lands were being heavily taxed by the Stamp Act, whereas heretofore they had been subject to no tax whatsoever from England; and now his acquisition of property was constrained by British policies that favored English investors and friendly Indian tribes over men like him. Something had to be done to remove the threat all these British actions represented. And something, indeed, was done: the Declaration of Independence.

The Justification for Revolution

THE SIGNATORIES TO THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, BEING pragmatic politicians about to engage in a great and extremely risky war, did not limit themselves to philosophical arguments about social contracts and the rights of men, though the likes of Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu certainly provided a valuable intellectual framework. Nor did America’s revolutionaries constrain their thinking to historical examples. Rather, and quite practically, they justified the ensuing War for Independence on the basis of an itemized list of grievances against the British Crown and its agents in the American colonies. These grievances reflected what some colonists saw as a fundamental break from their inalienable rights, a break that had arisen, as we saw, most particularly following the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and especially its North American manifestation in the French and Indian War (1754–1763).

Almost every American can recite, or at least paraphrase, the Declaration’s premise: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Too rarely do we read carefully beyond this glorious portion of the document. Yet, the justification for war is in all that follows, the import of much of which may be surprising to today’s reader. However, it was surely transparent to those who heard the Declaration read aloud in their town squares in July 1776, as well as to the fifty-six men who signed it.

Those who signed or supported the Declaration had a subtle, nuanced understanding of what justified rebellion. They knew that revolution, being extremely risky and costly, should not be entered into lightly. None knew this better than George Washington, a veteran and local hero of the French and India War who found himself called upon in 1775 to lead his fellow colonists’ war effort as commander in chief of an army against Britain. Washington, like the authors of the Declaration, understood that living under an unjust government was not by itself a sufficient justification for rebellion, but he slowly and reluctantly came to agree that the Crown had gone too far. As the Declaration states, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”