passed: "The die is now cast; the colonies must submit or triumph." This steady refusal of conciliation on his part added thousands to the followers of the irreconcilable spirits in the colonies, like Patrick Henry and the Adamses, and gave color to their rhetorical warnings against being "reduced to slavery." We have the testimony of the best English historians of the nineteenth century that George III was the evil spirit of the British Empire. "He had rooted out courage, frankness, and independence from the councils of state, and put puppets in the place of men" (Trevelyan); "his tactics were fraught with danger to the liberties of the people" (May); "his acts were as criminal as any which led Charles I to the scaffold" (Lecky); "the shame of the darkest hour of England's history lies wholly at his door" (Green).

REFERENCES

The Authority of Parliament in the Colonies: G. E. HOWARD, The Preliminaries of the Revolution (American Nation Series), chaps. i-v; W. M. SLOANE, The French War and the Revolution, chap. x; J. A. WOODBURN, Causes of the American Revolution (Johns Hopkins Studies, Series X, No. 12); Lecky's American Revolution, chap. i, pp. 1-49; CARL BECKER, The Beginnings of the American People, chap. ii; EDWARD CHANNING, History of the United States, Vol. III, chap. i; WM. MACDONALD, Select Charters of American History, 1606– 1775, Nos. 53-56; A. B. HART, American History told by Contemporaries, Vol. II, Nos. 45, 46, 88, 89; G. L. BEER, British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765; E. L. BOGART, Industrial History of the United States, chap. vii.

Taxation without Representation: BECKER, The Eve of the Revolution (Chronicles, Vol. XI), chaps. ii-iv; JUSTIN WINSOR, Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. VI, chap. i; JOHN FISKE, The American Revolution, Vol. I, chaps. i, ii; M. C. TYLER, Literary History of the American Revolution, Vol. I; G. OTTO TREVELYAN, The American Revolution, Vol. I; HART, Contemporaries, Vol. II, Nos. 138-152; HOWARD, chaps. vi-xv; BOGArt, chap. viii; CHANNING, Vol. III, chaps. ii-v; E. M. AVERY, History of the United States and its People, Vol. V, chaps. ii-ix; MACDONALD, Nos. 57–67. The Punishment of Massachusetts: FISKE, chap. iii; TREVELYAN, chap. iii; HOWARD, chaps. xv-xvii; WINSOR, chap. ii; SLOANE, chaps. xiv, xv; BECKER (Chronicles), chaps. v-vi; CHANNING, Vol. III, chaps. v-vi; AVERY, Vol. V, chaps. xi-xiii.

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS

1. English Opinions of the American Cause: (Dr. Samuel Johnson's) HART, Vol. II, No. 156; (Wm. Pitt's) HART, Vol. II, No. 142; Old South Leaflets, No. 199; (Edmund Burke's) Old South Leaflets, No. 200; WOODBURN, Lecky's American Revolution, pp. 154–165; Trevelyan, Vol. I, pp. 28–44.

2. The Navigation Acts: HART, Vol. II, Nos. 45, 46, 67, 85, 87, 131; WINSOR, Vol. VI, pp. 5-12; G. L. BEER, The Commercial Policy of England towards the American Colonies, pp. 35-65; BOGART, pp. 90-103.

3. The Conspiracy of Pontiac: F. A. OGG, The Old Northwest (Chronicles, Vol. XIX), pp. 1-19; SLOANE, pp. 99-103; WINSOR, Vol. VI, pp. 688-701; PARKMAN, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, Vol. I, pp. 172-321; Vol. II, pp. 299313; CHANNING and LANSING, The Story of the Great Lakes, pp. 113-134.

4. The Boston Tea Party: JOHN FISKE, Essays Historical and Literary, Vol. II, pp. 163–195; A. P. PEABODY, Boston Mobs before the Revolution (Atlantic Monthly, September, 1888); MacDonald, Nos. 64–70; Hart, Vol. II, No. 152; TYLER, Vol. I, pp. 246–266; Trevelyan, Vol. I, pp. 135–139, 175–192; Old South Leaflets, No. 68.

5. Thomas Hutchinson, the Last Royal Governor of Massachusetts: SLOANE, pp. 163–170; HART, Vol. II, Nos. 139-148; FISKE, Essays, Vol. I, pp. 1-51; WINSOR, Vol. VI, pp. 49–58; J. H. STARK, The Loyalists of Massachusetts, pp. 145-174; BECKER (Chronicles), pp. 165–199.

CHAPTER V

THE BIRTH OF THE NATION

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

124. The Second Continental Congress. "The war has actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? . . . Is life so dear 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!" These prophetic words were spoken by Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses less than a month before the "clash of arms" at Lexington and Concord. Less than a month after that event the second Continental Congress met at Philadelphia (May 10, 1775). Events had moved rapidly since the adjournment of the previous October. George III had received the petition of Congress with the remark that the "New England Governments were in rebellion"; blood had been shed on both sides, not by irresponsible mobs or taunted soldiery, but by troops marshaled in battle; eastern Massachusetts had risen in arm's and held its governor besieged in his capital of Boston; and on the very day when Congress assembled, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys surprised the British garrison in Fort Ticonderoga and turned them out "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress."

125. Formal Declaration of War. To meet the crisis the second Continental Congress, with the tacit consent of all the colonies, assumed the powers of a regular government. It utilized the rude colonial militia gathered around Boston as the nucleus of a continental army and appointed George Washington to the supreme command. It issued paper money, made trade regulations, sent agents abroad to win the favor of foreign courts, advised the colonies to set up governments for themselves, regardless of the king's officers,

ΠΙΟ

and made formal declaration of war (July 6, 1775) in these words: "Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. . . . Against violence we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities cease on the part of our aggressors." In spite of the fact, however, that "In the appeal to arms had already been made, there was enough conservative sentiment in the Congress to support John Dickinson in his motion to send another appeal to the king to restore peace and harmony with his colonies in America.

126. American Protestations of Loyalty before 1775. Until this final petition of Congress was spurned, the leaders of the colonial resistance to parliamentary taxation almost to a man protested their loyalty to King George III and the British Empire. "I have never heard from any person drunk or sober," said Benjamin Franklin to Lord Chatham in 1774, "the least expression of a wish for separation." Washington declared that even when he went to Cambridge to take command of the colonial army, the thought of independence was "abhorrent" to him. And John Adams said that he was avoided in the streets of Philadelphia in 1775 "like a man infected with leprosy" for his leanings toward "independency." To be sure, there were skeptical and ironical Tories in the colonies, who declared that the protestations of loyalty in the petitions of Congress and in the mouths of the "patriots" were only "the gold leaf to conceal the treason beneath"; but it is hard to believe that men like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Jay were insincere in their public

utterances.

127. Events of 1775 which widened the Breach. However, by the end of 1775 the doctrine of the allegiance of the colonies to King George was so flatly contradicted by the facts of the situation that it became ridiculous. From month to month the breach between the colonies and the mother country had widened. In March, 1775, Benjamin Franklin, who for ten years had been the agent for several of the colonies in London, returned to America, thereby confessing that nothing more was to be accomplished by diplomacy. In April occurred the battle of Lexington. In May came the bold capture of Fort Ticonderoga. In June Gage's army stormed the American breastworks on Bunker Hill in three desperate and bloody assaults, and burned the adjacent town of Charlestown. In July Massachusetts set up a new government independent of the king, and George

Washington took command of the colonial army which was besieging Gage in Boston. In August King George issued a proclamation calling on all loyal subjects to suppress the rebellion and sedition in North America. In September he hired 20,000 German soldiers from the princes of Hesse, Anhalt, and Brunswick, to reduce the colonies to submission. In October a British captain, without provocation, sailed into Falmouth harbor (Portland, Maine) and burned the town,

By his EXCELLENCY

WILLIAM TRYON, Esquire,

Captain General, and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New-York, and the
Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the fame.

A

PROCLAMATION.
WHEREAS I have received His Majefty's Royal Prociamation, given at the Court at St. James's, the Twenty-
third Day of Auguft laft, in the Words following:

BY THE KING,
A Proclamation,

For fupprefsing REBELLION and SEDITION.

TITLE OF KING GEORGE III'S PROCLAMATION OF REBELLION

rendering 1000 people homeless on the eve of a severe New England winter. In November two small American armies under Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold were invading Canada with the sanction of the Continental Congress. And on the last day of December, 1775, in a blinding snowstorm, the colonial troops made an attack on Quebec, in which Montgomery was killed and Arnold severely wounded. The news of the burning of Falmouth and the king's contract for German mercenaries reached Congress on the same day. The indignation of the assembly was extreme. "I am ready now, brother rebel," said a Southern member to Ward of Rhode Island, "to declare ourselves independent; we have had sufficient answer to our petition."