American Crisis

by William M. Fowler Jr.

  About noon on Sunday November 25, the post rider from Falmouth drew up at Germain’s fashionable Pall Mall residence. Germain was at home closeted with Thomas de Grey, Lord Walsingham, his undersecretary. Parliament, which had been in recess since July, was to open the coming Tuesday, November 27. As was the custom, the king would attend to deliver a speech, for the most part prepared by his ministers, including Germain, outlining the government’s policies. Following the speech, by tradition both the House of Lords and Commons would offer responses to the king. On this occasion the ministers had chosen Walsingham to answer in Lords. He and Germain were preparing Tuesday’s remarks. The news of Yorktown scuttled that speech, as both men recognized immediately the defeat threatened to sink the government. If Lord North teetered, Germain, as the principal architect of the war, would topple. Before informing North, Germain and Walsingham decided to collect their cabinet allies and go in force to Downing Street to stiffen their leader’s shaky resolve.

  Germain summoned his coach. He and Walsingham bumped along Regent Street to Portland Place, the home of Lord Stormont, the former ambassador to France, who held the position of secretary of state for the Northern Department, the office responsible for diplomatic relations with Europe.5 Like Germain and Walsingham, he had been unyielding toward the Americans. From Portland Place the three hurried to Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, to the house of Edward Thurlow, the lord chancellor infamous for his capacity to browbeat all who disagreed with him. Thurlow was equally inflexible toward the Americans. Determined to hold a hard line despite the news from America, the ministers departed hastily in company to bring the bad news to Lord North, whom they viewed as a weak and ineffective leader who continued in office only because of the king’s stubborn support.6

  In a moment of pique toward his chief Thurlow exclaimed, “Damn him … nothing can goad him forward, he is the very clog that loads everything.”7 North lived under the lingering cloud of his predecessor, the great William Pitt, who had brought glorious triumphs in the previous war against France. In private and public the unfortunate North was compared to the Great Commoner, never to his advantage. Everyone poured blame on him, including Germain, who complained bitterly, “Do what you will, nothing will avail till Lord North will adopt a system, pursue it with firmness, and oblige every department of government to act under his direction.”8 Despite their low opinion of him, North’s response to the defeat at Yorktown startled the four ministers. According to Germain, he took the news like “a ball in his breast.” Germain’s account had North opening “his arms, exclaiming wildly, as he paced up and down the apartment, during a few minutes, ‘Oh God! It is all over!’ Words which he repeated many times, under emotions of the deepest, agitation and distress.”9

  At first shaken by North’s loss of control, the ministers recovered quickly as their instincts for political survival overrode their contempt for their chief. They could only survive if he did. Delaying Parliament’s opening to provide time to fashion a strategy to fit the new circumstances was impractical, as members had already arrived in London and sending them home would cause an uproar. The king’s speech to Lords and Commons, however, now had to be rewritten to account for the disaster in Virginia. Having decided to hold the course, the ministers prepared a dispatch for the king, informing him of the late news from America. They agreed that until they heard from His Majesty the news had to be kept secret. The meeting adjourned with North in anguish.

  In contrast to the emotional scene on Downing Street, at the palace in Kew, just outside London, the king received the news with his usual air of tranquillity, a pose he often took in crisis to calm others and to assert his own firm resolution. “I have,” he wrote Germain, “received with sentiments of the deepest concern, the communication which Lord George Germain has made me.” In a characteristic understatement the king went on to observe, “I particularly lament it, on account of the consequences connected with it, and the difficulties which it may produce.” “Lament” he might, but he would not change. An entire field army had been lost at Yorktown, but as far as George III was concerned, “[it does not make] the smallest alteration in those principles of my conduct, which have directed me in past time, and which will always continue to animate me under every event, in the prosecution of the present contest.”10

  On Tuesday morning November 27, the royal procession made its way from St. James’s Palace to Westminster. In a ceremony enshrined in history and tradition, and preserved to this day, the king entered Westminster. After putting on the robes of state and donning the imperial state crown, in grand progress he made his way through the royal gallery to the House of Lords. “My Lords, pray be seated” was his command. As the Lords took their seats the lord chamberlain was dispatched to the House of Commons to “command the honourable House to attend His Majesty immediately in the House of Peers.” All of this was done in a prescribed ballet designed to recognize the rights and standing of the House as an independent body. Once assembled, the second session of the Fifteenth Parliament in the reign of King George III came to order to pay heed to the words of the king.11

  In a relatively short address, barely a thousand words, George III spoke of Cornwallis’s disaster as simply the “unfortunate loss” of his forces in Virginia.12 The “late misfortune,” he suggested, was only a temporary setback, and he assured the members that in time his “deluded subjects in America” would be restored to a “due obedience to the laws.” He went on to celebrate British victories in the East Indies and then concluded with a quick reference to the need to levy additional taxes to support the war.

  Whatever his shortcomings, Lord North was a political realist. The king, he knew, was spouting nonsense. Lords and Commons returned to their chambers to launch their assault on North’s government. Opposition to the war was hardly new in Commons. Some members, like Edmund Burke, had long opposed it out of principle; others, including the notorious Charles James Fox, were fired by a visceral dislike of the king and his abusive use of power. In the spring of 1780 the royal prerogative had come under especially heavy attack. After several speeches outlining waste and extravagance, Commons resolved famously “that the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.”13 Fox and other opposition members railed against “the enormous weight” of influence that North and his cohorts squeezed from the established power of the Crown. The king and his political cronies had at their disposal “the patronage of immense military establishments, and the annual expenditure of upwards of 20 millions of the public money.” They were, in sum, able to “buy” the House. But with events in America turning so sour, not even the force of money and position could stem the torrent sweeping down on the ministry. The king’s vacuous remarks laid bare a ministry void of ideas and resistant to change.

  Within minutes of their return to the House chamber after the king’s address the opposition in Commons let loose a barrage on the ministry. Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, and Isaac Barré filled the chamber with vitriol. Fox assailed the king and his “servile” and “profligate” ministry. He described the king’s speech as one that might have come from “some arbitrary, despotic, hard hearted, and unfeeling monarch.” As for North and his colleagues, they sought to put “the blame any where, but in the right place … their own weakness, obstinacy, inhumanity or treason.”14 The king’s supporters cried out against Fox’s intemperate language, but the weight of oratory was clearly on the side of the opposition. Following Fox’s long speech, Edmund Burke rose to address those who supported the ministry, as recorded in the Journals of the House of Commons.

  If there could be a greater misfortune than those we had undergone in the disgraceful contest we were engaged in, it was hearing men rising up in the great assembly of the nation to vindicate such measures; it was the most alarming part of our condition; it was that which froze up his blood, and harrowed up his soul; for if they were not to be taught by experience; if neither calamities could make them feel, nor the voice of
God make them wise, what had this poor fallen, miserable, and undone country to hope for?15

  Even in Lords the king and his ministers came under brutal attack. Lord Shelburne pronounced the war “ill fated.” The Earl of Abingdon declared that the war “was conceived in folly, tyranny, servility and corruption.” The Marquis of Rockingham accused the king of following the “fatal and pernicious counsels” of his ministers. North could barely stand the onslaught.16

  Outside the halls of Westminster reaction came just as quickly and forcefully. The Liveried Companies of London (an eighteenth-century chamber of commerce), whose members had seen their business strangled by the war, hurled an attack on the king: “Your armies are captured; the wonted superiority of your navies is annihilated; your dominions are lost.” Petitions to end the war flowed into Parliament, including one from “the Sheriffs of London, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the City of London” to end “the unfortunate war with America.”17

  Caught between an angry and obstinate king and volcanic opposition, North sought sanctuary in a middle ground. Rather than sharply rejoining the opposition, he took a more moderate tone, assuring the members that while the king and his ministers would continue to assert the rights of Parliament, that did not necessarily mean forcefully subduing the Americans. He even went so far as to admit to the House of Commons that the war was unfortunate but the attacks on his ministry were “unjust.”18 Even Germain, the principal target of an unrelenting assault, struck a tone of moderation. North’s government was reeling. Members demanded an explanation for how the ministry had lost two armies, those of Burgoyne and Cornwallis, and why the navy had withdrawn, abandoning Cornwallis to his dire fate. Sir George Young stood in Commons to accuse the Admiralty of wasting vast sums of money. Out of doors the London press was having a field day stinging the government. For more than two weeks North endured. Had it not been for the respite of the Christmas season, which brought the usual long recess, and the stubborn refusal of the king to yield, the government might have fallen before the New Year.

  Not even the Christmas spirit could bring a halt to the turmoil. Barely had the members climbed into their carriages for the journey home to enjoy the yuletide when an emotional Henry Seymour Conway, a persistent opponent of the war (he had moved to repeal the Stamp Act in 1766), burst out to a friend, “We are undone as we have long been. [N]othing but peace can save us.”19 What Conway did not appreciate, nor did most members of Parliament, was that peace by itself was no longer sufficient. Americans would never accept peace without independence.

  Over the recess more dispatches arrived from America. To the surprise of few, Generals Clinton and Cornwallis filled their dispatch cases with conflicting accounts of who was to blame for the Yorktown disaster. Cornwallis moved first to protect his flank. In his initial message to Clinton, on October 20, he censured his commander for not sending reinforcements. Clinton in turn debited Cornwallis for going to Virginia in the first place, and the Royal Navy for not getting him out of there.20 The press and others were just as quick to take up cudgels on behalf of their favorites.

  In this political scrum Cornwallis was certain to come out ahead of Clinton. The earl was a peer of the realm and extraordinarily well connected. Clinton, on the other hand, was of more modest origins, less well connected, and given to displays of ill grace that managed to offend all but his closest associates. Nor did it help Clinton’s cause that Cornwallis, who no longer had a command in America, was able to leave New York before Clinton, arriving at London in late December. “Lord Cornwallis is in great favor, as things are totally misunderstood,” wrote Clinton’s cousin the Duke of Newcastle to the general. “He seems to me to be supported both by King and ministers, which I own makes my hair stand on end.”21 Clinton, who could not leave his post in America without the king’s permission, remained in New York to fume at the injustice.

  While the generals battled over reputations, others fought for more immediate stakes, often their lives. American loyalists were in jeopardy. As areas under British control had gradually shrunk to a few coastal enclaves, these “Good Americans” sought safety within the redcoat lines. By far the largest number of refugees holed up in New York City.22

  William Franklin, the bastard son of Benjamin and the deposed royal governor of New Jersey, was their spokesman and leader. In the spring of 1780 Clinton appointed Franklin president of the newly formed Board of Associated Loyalists.23 Its benign title masked a more sinister purpose. The association sprang from an order sent by Germain early in 1780 instructing Clinton to arm and organize loyalist refugees. Their mission was to unsettle the rebels with raids into New Jersey, Long Island, and along the coast.24 For Franklin and the “associators,” the war was personal. They embraced the opportunity to wreck vengeance on an enemy that had upended their lives and taken all that they owned.

  Under Franklin’s direction bands of loyalist partisans, often called “cowboys,” ravaged the patriot countryside. They soon found their match, as rebel “skinners” returned tit for tat.25 Neither side paid much heed to the niceties of war. When they rode, murder and mayhem joined them. Clinton found Franklin’s rascals impossible to control. Hedging as usual, he explained, “I neither claim merit from nor do I consider myself as responsible for any of their transactions.”26

  Franklin and his loyalist friends viewed Clinton’s equivocation as bordering on betrayal. They were increasingly wary of the faithfulness of their British protectors. A parade of British generals had come and gone from America, each having arrived with the promise of victory and each having sailed home with his reputation tarnished. Clinton and Cornwallis were only the latest to join the roster.

  In the aftermath of Yorktown the loyalists’ position grew even more precarious. Whatever public bluster flew from generals and politicians about victory over the rebels, Franklin and his friends sensed the ill wind of reconciliation. Any settlement that left power in the hands of the patriots would work against their interests. They saw fresh evidence of British betrayal in article 10 of Cornwallis’s capitulation at Yorktown. In his draft of the article Cornwallis proposed that “natives or inhabitants of different parts of this country, at present in York or Gloucester, are not to be punished on account of having joined the British army.” Washington rejected it outright, responding that the treatment of such people was a matter for “civil resort.” Given a weak central government and thirteen strong state governments, “civil resort” meant that the fate of the loyalists would be left to the states and local authorities. Washington, and by implication the Congress, could offer no protection for the king’s friends.27 At the local level justice and mercy were likely to be in short supply for the loyalists. That Cornwallis had yielded to the Americans in article 10 suggested a fundamental weakness of British support for the loyalists.

  An angry Franklin told Germain that the failure of the king’s government to protect the loyalists left them in a status no better than “runaway slaves.”28 Other loyalists joined the chorus. Some threatened to abandon all hope and go over to the rebels—a very unlikely occurrence.29 Clinton showed little sympathy. When Franklin asked him for leave to go to England to plead the loyalist case, Clinton, already with enough enemies in London, refused, suspecting that the deposed governor would spend as much time stalking the corridors of Whitehall assailing him as he might in defending loyalists.

  Ironically, while he blocked Franklin’s departure, Clinton was pulling every lever he could to find his own exit out of New York. No one understood the military situation in America better than he, and no one was less sanguine about British prospects. What few rays of hope were left after Yorktown dimmed further in early March when the general received orders from Germain instructing him that, in light of the deteriorating situation in America, reinforcements he had requested would not be sent, and moreover he ought not to undertake any land operations beyond New York City. Having told the general to sit tight and do nothing to antagonize the Americans, the secretary then co
unseled him to do all that he could to encourage the loyalists and to reassure them that the king continued to hold their interests at heart.30 Clinton was beside himself, and in the presence of the colony’s chief justice, William Smith, he let loose against North, Germain, and the entire ministry. Smith thought that the general was on the verge of collapse. “He is a distressed man, looking for Friends, and suspicious of all mankind.”31 Yet despite all this, Clinton would not abandon his post unless recalled. Two weeks later he got his wish. On March 27 he opened a dispatch from Germain granting permission for him to return home. The next day another dispatch arrived with the additional information that Sir Guy Carleton would be his replacement. Although the king granted him the option to leave immediately, Clinton decided to await Carleton’s arrival. His decision to delay his departure was born of spite and bile. He so detested his second in command, Major General James Robertson, that he could not bear the thought of Robertson succeeding him even temporarily. He preferred to hand authority directly to Carleton.32