Part 9

You have heard of the beginnings of the French power in America--how Cartier and La Salle, Marquette and Champlain, explored the country and claimed it in the name of their king. They went up and down the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and established along the streams their trading-posts and military forts.

The English meanwhile, settled along the Atlantic coast and established farms and villages.

The English patents granted to their colonists the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The French claimed and were occupying the Mississippi valley. The English pressed westward and crossed the Alleghany Mountains through gaps made by the rivers which the French claimed; the French pressed eastward along these same rivers. Contact and conflict were inevitable. The French foresaw it and made their preparations accordingly. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, they established posts and organized their forces. French traders, French missionaries, French settlers, upheld the power of their king. They made friends with the Indians of many tribes, but from the day that Champlain joined battle against the Iroquois, the Five Nations were the deadly enemies of the French and therefore the friends of the English.

The English were, as you may think, most unwilling to give up the western lands which they claimed. Governor Spottswood of Virginia, who in 1716 rode westward to the summit of the Blue Ridge at the head of a company of gentlemen, realized how important it was to hold this fair region against the French. He urged the English government to establish a chain of posts from the lakes to the Mississippi in order to keep back the French. His advice was unheeded. A few years later the French began to occupy the valley of the Ohio, and it became evident that there the two nations would clash.

During this time there were growing into manhood two youths who were to be leaders when the conflict came.

One of these was a Frenchman, Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm. At the age of fourteen, he entered the army and at the age of eighteen he was a general. He did valiant service in Italy and in Germany.

Several years younger than Montcalm was the English soldier, James Wolfe. He also became a soldier at an early age and at sixteen was serving in the Netherlands, doing a man’s work in the battles which he described with boyish zest in his loving and dutiful letters to his mother in England.

About the middle of the eighteenth century, the French determined to shorten and strengthen their line of defence towards the south. They established a fort on French Creek and an outpost upon the Alleghany River. This was land which the English claimed, and George Washington, then a lad of twenty-one, was sent to the French to demand that they leave the Ohio. A forced march was made through the pathless winter woods. The French commander received the messenger courteously, but informed him that they regarded the land as their own and had no intention of yielding it to the English. This was in the winter of 1753. The next year Washington was sent in command of a little force of three hundred and fifty men to uphold the English claim, and was defeated at Great Meadows by a French force of double the size. The English began to build a fort at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers on a site selected by Washington, but the French drove them away and finished the fort, which they called Fort Du Quesne.

In this emergency the colonies at first did not act together. Troops were sent from Virginia, South and North Carolina, and Maryland; but the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the Dutch of New York said that the English claim to the valley of the Ohio was a matter of no importance, and did not move. Fortunately, the home government recognized the necessity of protecting the frontier, and of extending outposts; troops were sent from England for this purpose. Thus in 1755 began the Seven Years’ War which involved England and France in Europe; in America this contest was called the French and Indian War, from the enemies the English colonists had to encounter.

The English general Braddock led forces to the northwest just as he would have marched them in a European campaign. He paid with his life the penalty of his ignorance of Indian warfare, being defeated and fatally wounded by an Indian attack in the forest. This defeat was the first of many.

“I dread to hear from America,” said the English statesman, Pitt, as month after month, year after year, brought tidings of defeat.

In the spring of 1756, Montcalm was sent to Canada to command the French forces. He began a career of victory by capturing Fort Ontario at Oswego. The next year he captured Fort William Henry at the head of Lake George, with its garrison of twenty-five hundred men. In 1758, with thirty-six hundred men he defended Fort Ticonderoga against an English force of fifteen thousand. As he had neither men nor supplies to hold the place, he was compelled to abandon it the next year and retire to Quebec. Here he was to contend in a death struggle with the English general Wolfe, who was sent to America in 1758.

The English realized the value of their New World possessions. The best of their troops were sent over to prosecute the war with vigor. Montcalm, on the other hand, lacked men, means, ammunition, and supplies, for which he appealed in vain to the home government. With a sad heart he foresaw the downfall of French power in America. Resolved “to find his grave under the ruins of the colony,” he bent all his energies to the struggle.

One place after another was captured by the English. News of their victories came now as regularly as tidings of their defeat had come a few months before. Louisburg, a naval station and fortified town commanding the mouth of the St. Lawrence, was attacked and taken. The French were driven from Fort Frontenac at Oswego which guarded the outlet of the Great Lakes. Fort Du Quesne was taken by Washington, and Crown Point was captured and strengthened.

In 1759 the rival powers made ready for a final struggle at Quebec, the stronghold of the French. Montcalm had retired there and collected his forces--fourteen thousand men. Wolfe, with a smaller army, besieged the place. Week after week the English endeavored to find a vulnerable spot; week after week the French held the strongly-fortified city. At last Wolfe determined to conduct soldiers up a bluff which was so steep that it was thought to be inaccessible and so was not strongly guarded.

One September night his boats dropped down the river and landed the soldiers who marched up the cliff. On the way Wolfe quoted some lines from Gray’s noble poem, “The Elegy in a Country Churchyard:”

“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave Await alike the inevitable hour:-- The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

“I would rather have written that than to take Quebec,” he said.

By daybreak four thousand, five hundred men were on the heights above Quebec. Montcalm, with such a force as he could collect, made ready to attack.

Wolfe gave his last charge to his men: “The officers and men will remember what their country expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers are capable of doing against five weak battalions, mingled with a disorderly peasantry. The soldiers must be attentive to their officers, and resolute in the execution of their duty.”

He led his men forward to the plains of Abraham, an open tract about a mile from Quebec. In the attack Wolfe was wounded. He was informed that the French were retreating and an eye-witness says that he “raised himself up on this news and smiled in my face. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I die contented,’ and from that instant the smile never left his face till he died.”

Montcalm, too, was mortally wounded. On being told that death was near he said, “So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”

The fall of this stronghold was the practical loss of Canada. By the treaty of peace in 1763, France yielded to England all her northern possessions in America, and her claim on the eastern valley of the Mississippi.

Patrick Henry

An Eloquent Orator

Up to the very time that war was begun, Franklin hoped that it might be averted; even then while he hoped that the colonies would get their rights, he expected them to remain subject to England. Patrick Henry was one of the few men who looked with eagle eye into the future and saw that the American cause--the cause of freedom--must be upheld by force of arms.

Patrick Henry was born in Virginia, in 1736. He was an awkward and idle lad who picked up a smattering of an education at an “old field school,” as the country schools of the time were called. He was fond of books, but fonder still of his gun and his fishing-rod with which he spent most of his spare time in the woods.

It was, however, necessary for him to set to work when a boy of fifteen. He became a clerk in a store and then opened a little shop of his own--but he did not succeed either as clerk or shopkeeper. He married in young manhood and in order to support his wife and children he went to work on a farm; here also he failed. He went back to shopkeeping--and failed again. By this time people had a poor opinion of the idle, slovenly young man whose life had been a series of failures. The truth is, Henry was like a fish out of water; but in the course of time he was to find his element.

At the age of twenty-four, he read law for six weeks, was examined by judges, and was given a license to practice the profession. The judges granted his license with much hesitation. Henry was ignorant of the law,--had indeed read only the Virginia Statutes and one other law book. But he showed remarkable powers of thought and reasoning, natural not acquired qualifications, and the license was granted on condition that he would continue to study. One of the judges said, “Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you will do well, and become an ornament and an honor to your profession.”

It is not strange, however, that the small amount of law business which was in his community did not come Henry’s way. People naturally preferred to put their business in the hands of those whom they considered better qualified. He eked out a support for his family by aiding his father-in-law to manage a tavern.

In 1763 he had what seems to have been his first really important case,--one which was turned over to him because no one else cared to undertake it. This was the famous “Parsons’ Case.” In order to understand it, you must remember that the colony of Virginia was then a part of England and that the church of England, like its civil government, was established by law. The salaries of clergymen were raised by a regular tax on all the people. As money was scarce in the colonies, this tax was paid in tobacco which was the regular currency of Virginia. By law sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was a clergyman’s yearly salary.

The people do not seem to have objected to paying these salaries, and usually they found no fault with the amount of them. Twice, however, after bad crop years, the House of Burgesses passed laws allowing the payment of money instead of tobacco at a rate lower than the price of tobacco in these years of scarcity. Naturally, the clergymen did not like this, and they finally appealed to the king of England who decided that the salaries must be paid in tobacco every year. So the clergymen of Hanover county where Henry lived brought suit for the loss sustained by the payment of money instead of tobacco. As the king, who was the supreme authority, had decided the matter in favor of the clergymen, it seemed that there was nothing for the Virginia courts to do but to agree on the amount of damages due and pay them. Henry, however, offered to plead the case against the parsons and plead it he did with unexpected power. He told the people fearlessly that this was a matter for them to decide. They were to be governed by their House of Burgesses. It had made this law, and the king of England had no right to gainsay it. Henry spoke so eloquently that he won the sympathy of all. The jury could not put aside the king’s decree but it gave a nominal adherence to that and a real one to Henry’s argument; for it stated the clergymen’s damages as one penny each, about two cents.

From that time Henry was “the man of the people;” a little ahead of the conservative element, but always in sympathy with the people and always upon the side of the cause which in the end proved right. After his success in “the Parsons’ Case,” he did not lack law business. He was sent in the spring of 1765 to the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg. This was then the site of the Virginia government; having been selected after Jamestown was burned in the Great Rebellion.

The people of the colonies--even the loyal Virginians--were beginning to be dissatisfied with the treatment of the mother-country. The Seven Years’ War between England and France had come to an end two years before. It had, of course, cost a great deal of money; in particular, the sending of troops and supplies against the French in America had been very expensive. The English government said that the colonies ought to bear a large share of the war debt; the contest had begun on the American frontier and the English victory had extended colonial territory and trade. On the whole, this was not unfair. Probably the colonies would have agreed to it, if they had been allowed to send representatives to parliament--the English legislative body which has the power of taxation. But the English were not willing to grant that right. Then, said the Americans, “We must not be taxed. ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny.’”

England paid little attention to the protests from America. A Stamp Act was passed,--that is, a law requiring a stamp to be put on all papers to make them legal. The money for these stamps was to be a source of revenue to help pay the war debt. When the matter was being discussed, Virginia protested against this Stamp Act. Nevertheless, in May, 1765, a copy of the act was sent to the Virginia legislature, with the information that it had become a law and must be enforced at a certain time.

In the House of Burgesses, in 1765, among stately gentlemen in silks and velvets with their curled and powdered wigs, sat a raw country man dressed in shabby clothes and wearing his own plain hair. This was Patrick Henry. One day he arose and addressed that gathering of high-bred scholarly men and presented certain resolutions to the effect that the people of the colonies had all the rights and privileges of the people of Great Britain,--were like them Englishmen--and that the taxes must, according to “characteristics of British freedom” be laid by the people themselves or by those chosen by them--that only the general assembly of Virginia had a right to lay taxes on Virginians, and that the people were not bound to obey any other laws.

In the heated discussion which followed, Henry protested against the despotic action of the king. “Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.”--

“Treason, treason!” came the interruption.

“May profit by their example,” concluded the orator. “If that be treason make the most of it.”

Henry’s resolutions were carried by a majority of one. These resolutions and his speech had “started the ball of revolution rolling.” The Stamp Act, so vigorously protested against, was repealed, but new and hateful taxes were laid on tea, glass, paper, and other articles.

Ten years passed during which Henry practiced his profession, served four years in the House of Burgesses, and took an interest in all public questions. During these ten years, the colonies had drifted and been driven further from England, the mother-country. Patrick Henry saw that the encroachments on the rights of the people must be resisted--not by words now, but by arms. In the spring of 1775 a convention of Virginia leaders met in St. John’s church in Richmond to consider the state of the country.

Henry rose and “resolved that this colony be immediately put in a posture of defence.” The matter was argued earnestly; many men advised sending new petitions to the king. Then Patrick Henry made the speech, which every schoolboy knows, urging not petition but action. “Is life so dear,” he ended, “or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me give me liberty or give me death!”

He carried the patriots with him and his resolutions were passed; thus Virginia announced that she would fight for her rights. A few weeks later the English general, Gage, attacked the people in Massachusetts and the colonies sprang to arms.

Henry served three years as governor of Virginia. After the Revolution, he took for some time an active part in public affairs and then withdrew to private life. In 1799, at the personal request of Washington, he became a candidate for office and was elected to the House of Delegates. But he did not live to take his seat, dying June 6, 1799.

Samuel Adams

A Massachusetts Patriot

Samuel Adams is often called “the father of the Revolution.” He was the great-grandson of one of the Puritan settlers who came to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, and was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1722.

Adams was not a typical thrifty New Englander. His private life was a series of business failures and hardships that remind us of the early career of Patrick Henry. Adams, however, unlike Henry, was college bred, having been educated at Harvard. He tried law as a profession, but did not like it well enough to continue its practice. Then he became, first a clerk and then a merchant, and as both he was a failure. Next he became a brewer, and in this trade, also, he was unsuccessful. The truth is, he kept too busy attending to public business to pay proper attention to his private affairs. Perhaps his attention was first called to public matters by a private grievance. A law passed by Parliament against certain stock-companies made it necessary to close a banking company with which his father was connected and swept away his fortune.

[Illustration: SAMUEL ADAMS]

Unsuccessful as Samuel Adams was as a business man, it was known that he was a good citizen, with wise and patriotic views about public matters. He ably voiced colonists’ objections to the arbitrary taxation of the British government. “If taxes are laid upon us,” he said, in a paper in 1764, “in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of Free Subjects to the miserable state of tributary Slaves? We claim British rights not by charter only. We are born to them!”

Adams was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1765 and the famous “Massachusetts Resolves” were his work. They expressed loyalty to the king, but refused to aid to execute the Stamp Act. It was not against England as yet but against the unjust laws of the despotic king and ministry that there was hostility.

Hutchinson, who was the royal governor, informed the home government that its course was unwise. “It cannot be good policy,” he said, “to tax the Americans; it will prove prejudicial to the national interests. You will lose more than you will gain. Britain reaps the profit of all their trade and of the increase of their substance.” But his warning was unheeded, and it devolved upon him to execute the unpopular acts. He suffered as the instrument of British oppression. His house was attacked and destroyed, and he and his family were driven away.

The first of November came--the day on which the Stamp Act was to go into effect. Boston church bells tolled and minute guns were fired. The stamps lay untouched; business stopped, because people would not buy and use them as required by law. The Stamp Act was repealed, but Parliament at the same time took occasion to assert “that it was competent to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” Other unjust taxes were laid and protest followed protest from the colonies.

In order to uphold the king’s authority, British soldiers were sent to Boston. On a March day in 1770 occurred one of the many quarrels between the soldiers and the citizens. A company of soldiers was sent out to disperse the mob; it refused to disperse, and the soldiers fired, killing three people and wounding several others. This was the famous “Boston massacre.”

The infuriated people would have attacked the soldiers but Samuel Adams persuaded them to refrain from disorder and bloodshed; he advised them to demand from the governor the withdrawal of the two regiments stationed in Boston. This was agreed to and the next day a committee, of which Samuel Adams was the spokesman, went to Governor Hutchinson to make this demand. The governor said at first that he had no authority to remove the troops; after talking with the commander, however, he promised to send one regiment away.

“Sir,” said Samuel Adams, “if you have authority to remove one regiment you have authority to remove two; and nothing short of the departure of the troops will satisfy the public mind or restore the peace of the province.”

The governor finally had to yield to the demand of the people that he withdraw “both regiments or none” and the soldiers were sent to the castle.

As time passed, Adams ceased to hope for reconciliation between the colonies and England. He realized that it was important for the colonies to make common cause in defence of their rights. On his motion in the Massachusetts legislature in 1772 citizens were appointed as Committees of Correspondence to “state, communicate, and publish the rights of the colonies.” From this beginning grew the union of the colonies.

Matters came to a crisis in Boston when the tea on which a tax was laid was sent to the port. It had been sent to New York and Philadelphia, and there the people refused to allow it to be landed and it was returned to England. In South Carolina it was landed and left to mold in cellars because the people would not purchase it. In December, 1773, Samuel Adams, so often the spokesman of the people, went to ask the governor to send the tea back to England, instead of having it landed in Boston. In old South Church were assembled seven thousand people, to hear the result of his embassy. The governor refused.