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George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, The American revolution. (search)
a continual state of morbid irritability; and, from the time when the court of France resolved to treat with the Americans, his prophetic fears could never for a moment be lulled to rest. Portugal, which in the seven years war, with the aid of England, escaped absorption by Spain, seemed necessarily about to become an ally of the British king. Its harbors, during the last year of the ministry of Pombal, were shut against the vessels of the United States; and congress, on the thirtieth of 1776. Dec. 30. December, 1776, resenting the insult, was willing to incur its enmity, as the price of the active friendship of Spain. Secret Journals of Congress, II. 40-44. But when, two months later, on the 1777. Feb. 24. twenty-fourth of February, 1777, the weak-minded, superstitious Maria the First succeeded to the throne, Pombal retired before reactionary imbecility. Portugal, in exchange for a tract of land conterminous to Brazil, withdrew from the La Plata, and was scarcely heard of ag
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 3: (search)
m these words were addressed was the brave, warm-hearted Charles Augustus of Saxe-Weimar, who, in 1776, being then of only nineteen years, refused a request for leave to open recruiting offices at Ilme amelioration of domestic and international law. When in May, 1776, the Prussian minister in 1776. London offered to submit a plan for a direct commerce with America, so as to open a sale for Silependence. He had predicted that measure when first informed that the mother coun- Chap. III.} 1776. try sought the aid of foreign troops to reduce her colonies; Frederic to Maltzan, 23 Oct., 17datum to Goltz, 28 Sept., 1776. Meantime the liberties of Germany, not less than Chap. III.} 1776. those of the United States, were endangered; and the political question of the day assumed the lrt of that electorate. To prevent so fatal a measure, the king of Prussia, in the last months of 1776, began to draw near to France, which was one of the guarantees of the peace of Westphalia. Fre
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 4: (search)
long enough for them to prepare for his attack. He was driven out of Boston from his most unmilitary neglect to occupy Dorchester heights which overlook the town. He took his troops in midwinter to the bleak, remote, and then scarcely inhabited Halifax, instead of sailing to Rhode Island, or some convenient nook on Long Island within the Chap. IV.} 1778. sound, where he would have found a milder climate, greater resources, and nearness to the scene of his next campaign. In the summer of 1776, marching by night to attack General Putnam in his lines at Brooklyn, he lost the best chance of success by halting his men for rest and breakfast. When his officers still reported to him that they could easily storm the American intrenchments, he forbade them to make the attempt. His want of vigilance was so great that he let Washington pass a day in collecting boats, and a night and morning in retreating across an arm of the sea, and knew not what was done till he was roused from slumber
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 5: (search)
r, had colonized this beautiful region and governed it as its county of Westmoreland. The settlements, begun in 1754, increased in numbers and wealth till their annual tax amounted to two thousand pounds in Connecticut currency. In the winter of 1776, the people aided Washington with two companies of infantry, though their men were all needed to protect their own homes. Knowing the alliance of the British with the Six Nations, they built a line of ten forts as places of refuge. The Seneca ent or its army to reduce the United States served only to promote its independence. In 1775 Chap. V.} 1778. Sept. they sought to annihilate the rebellion by attacking it at its source; and before many months they were driven out of Boston. In 1776 the acquisition of New York was to prelude the one last campaign for crushing all resistance; in 1777 Philadelphia was taken, but only to be evacuated in 1778. To a friend in Virginia Washington wrote in August, as he came again upon White Plains
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 7: (search)
tened by the disasters that befell the American armies. Their value was further impaired by the ignoble stratagem of the 1776. British ministers, under whose authority Lord Dunmore and others introduced into the circulation of Virginia and other ste congres manquant une fois de credit public, trouverait beaucoup de difficulties à le retablir. Maltzan au roi, 2 Avril, 1776. In Octo- Chap. VII.} 1776. ber, 1776, congress, which possessed no independent resources and no powers on which credit c1776. ber, 1776, congress, which possessed no independent resources and no powers on which credit could be founded, opened loan offices in the several states, and authorized a lottery. In December it issued five million dollars more in continental bills. In January, 1777, when they had sunk to one-half of their pre- 1777. tended value, it denou1776, congress, which possessed no independent resources and no powers on which credit could be founded, opened loan offices in the several states, and authorized a lottery. In December it issued five million dollars more in continental bills. In January, 1777, when they had sunk to one-half of their pre- 1777. tended value, it denounced every person who would not receive them at par as a public enemy, liable to forfeit whatever he offered for sale; and it requested the state legislatures to declare them a lawful tender. This Massachusetts had enacted a month before; and the ex
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 8: (search)
for the valor of the actors, their fidelity to one another, the seeming feebleness of their means, and the great result of their hardihood, remains forever memorable in the history of the world. On the sixth of June, 1776, the emigrants to the 1776. region west of the Louisa river, at a general meeting in Harrodston, elected George Rogers Clark and another as their representatives to the assembly of Virginia, with a request that their settlements might be constituted a county. Before they cginia had declared independence, established a government, and adjourned. In a later session, they were not admitted to seats in the house; but on the sixth of December the westernmost part of the state was incorporated as a county Chap. VIII.} 1776. and named Kentucky. As on his return he descended the Ohio, Clark brooded over the conquest of the land to the north of the river. In the summer of 1777, he sent two young hunters to reconnoitre 1777. the French villages in Illinois and on the
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 13: (search)
a, Robert Howe was superseded in the south- Chap. XIII.} 1779. ern command by Major-General Benjamin Lincoln. In private life this officer was most estimable; as a soldier he was brave, but of a heavy mould and inert of will. Towards the end of 1776, he had repaired to Washington's camp as a major-general of militia; in the following February, he was transferred to the continental service, and passed the winter at Morristown. In the spring of 1777, he was completely surprised by the British, 14. were overtaken, surprised, and completely routed. Their commander and forty others fell in battle, and many prisoners were taken. About two hundred escaped to the British lines. The republican govern- Chap. XIII.} 1779. ment which, since 1776, had maintained its jurisdiction without dispute in every part of the commonwealth, arraigned some of them in the civil court; and, by a jury of their fellow-citizens, seventy of them were convicted of treason and rebellion against the state of So
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 14: (search)
on provoked by the unrelenting rancor of loyalists threatened the extermination of her people. Left mainly to her own resources, it was through bloodshed and devastation and the depths of wretchedness that her citizens were to bring her back to her place in the republic by their own heroic courage and self-devotion, having suffered more, and dared more, and achieved more than the men of any other state. Sir Henry Clinton, in whose mind his failure be- Chap. XIV.} 1779. fore Charleston in 1776 still rankled, resolved in person to carry out the order for its reduction. In August, an English fleet commanded by Arbuthnot, an old and inefficient admiral, brought him reenforce-ments and stores; in September, fifteen hundred men arrived from Ireland; in October, Rhode Island was evacuated, and the troops which had so long been stationed there in inactivity were incorporated into his army. It had been the intention of Clinton to embark in time to acquire Charleston before the end of the
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 17: (search)
ve-trade and of slavery by Jefferson in his draft of the declaration of independence was rejected by the congress of 1776 1776. in deference to South Carolina and Georgia. A few days later, in the earliest debates on the plan of confederation, thnscious of his own good intentions, cares not whom they please or offend. When the constituent convention of Virginia 1776. adopted their declaration of rights as the foundation of government for themselves and their posterity, they set forth inis own household. Next in order comes Delaware, which on the twentieth of September, 1776, adopted its constitution as 1776. an independent state. In proportion to its numbers, it had excelled all in the voluntary emancipation of slaves. Its coted every plan for employing them as soldiers on the side of England. The puritans of Massachusetts and their descend- 1776. ants, though they tolerated slavery, held that slaves had rights. Laws on marriage and against adultery were applied to
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10, Chapter 19: (search)
eave all power in the hands of the separate states was a natural consequence of their historic development, and was confirmed by pressing necessity. A single assembly, so John Adams long continued to reason, is every way adequate Chap. XIX.} 1780. to the management of all the federal concerns of the people of America; and with very good reason, because congress is not a legislative assembly, nor a representative assembly, but a diplomatic assembly. Conventions of states had been held in 1776, and in every successive year, to consider the decline of the paper currency, and the regulation of prices. One of these attracted the more attention, as it assembled at Philadelphia, represented every state north of Virginia except New York, and prolonged its existence by adjournments. At the convention called in August, 1780, no states appeared except Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; but a step was taken towards the formation of a federal constitution. After adopting a seri