First Salute (28 page)

Except for one missing element, the peace terms proposed by Britain appeared to be a package of everything the Americans wanted: exemption from taxation by Parliament, membership in the House of Commons accepted as a principle (method and numbers were to be worked out in discussion), recognition of Congress as a constitutional body, repeal of the tea duty and other punitive acts—in short, everything except the grant of independence, on which the Americans insisted as a prior condition of, not a subject for, negotiation. Upon this rock of independence the mission foundered, nor was there any mention of withdrawal from the country of British troops and ships, another American condition; and without these conditions, members of Congress would neither meet nor talk with the peace commissioners. In any event, the peace overture had come too late. Having pledged to France to make no separate peace, the Americans could not have come to terms with the British even if they had wanted to. “The pride of men,” Edmund Burke noted, “will not often suffer reason to have any scope until it can be no longer of service.”

To end a war and restore peace in its place needs delicacy. The tactics of Carlisle and his colleague on the commission—Governor Johnstone, so called because he had formerly served as Governor of West Florida—were so heavy-handed as to suggest that they were intended to fail, as perhaps they were. The British government, hating and rejecting the thought of independence, had, as was suspected, planned the Peace Commission as a gesture to quiet the Opposition, without wanting a positive result. They were not likely to get one by Governor Johnstone’s methods, which were as counterproductive as possible, as we shall see. Before his service as Governor of West Florida, he had been a naval officer of the aggressive, dictatorial and quarrelsome kind. Given to dueling, he had been found guilty by court-martial of insubordination in a duel, but not sentenced except by reprimand because of personal bravery in action. In Florida his staff had officially protested his autocratic
conduct. He was not the ideal selection for a peace mission. Carlisle, as noted, knew nothing of negotiation. William Eden, the third commissioner, had been confidential secretary to the Board of Trade and Plantations, which governed relations with the Colonies, and, as a member of both the English and later Irish parliaments, had to deal with both Americans and Irish, two troublesome peoples. During the war with America, he served as the director of secret intelligence. In these positions he might be supposed to have learned the utility of tactful procedures, though if he had, he seems not to have been able to convey them to his colleagues.

The British government itself had nullified the mission before it could act, by ordering the evacuation of Philadelphia for transfer of command to New York, giving an effect of British withdrawal just as the peace commissioners were due to arrive in America. The appearance of yielding was enhanced by the transfer of 5,000 troops, which had held Philadelphia, to the West Indies to counter expected French attack on the islands. Philadelphia was thus rendered indefensible and Carlisle deprived of his theorem that “gunpowder or guineas will fix the business.”

An offer of peace terms by one belligerent will always give an impression of a weakening of purpose and will to victory. The other party, sensing weakness, will be less disposed to accept terms. This is one reason why ending a war is always more difficult than starting one. The Peace Commission and the Conciliatory Propositions unavoidably gave an impression that British enthusiasm for the war was fading, which was indeed the case and which naturally gave the Americans reason to reject terms or even to discuss them.

Frustrated and affronted in America by the refusal of Congress to meet with him and his colleagues, Johnstone’s idea was to persuade individual members by worldly rewards to move the recalcitrant Congress to enter negotiations. He made his proposals in writing, offering to bribe Robert Morris of Philadelphia, one of the richest men in America and a devoted partisan of the Revolution, and also Joseph Reed, the Pennsylvania patriot, who was offered £10,000 if he could reconcile the Colonies with Britain. Johnstone suggested that peerages could be arranged for other members who might succeed in promoting a settlement. Among those he approached was Henry Laurens, President of the Congress. When Johnstone’s letters were given by their indignant recipients to the press, public outrage forced the overenterprising commissioner to resign from the Peace Commission and return to England. Eden,
more circumspect, took no part, unless private and undocumented, in his colleague’s too zealous maneuvers, writing only to his brother at home that if “my wishes and cares could accomplish it, this noble country would soon belong once more to Great Britain.” His chief of mission, Lord Carlisle, was left to resort to a tactic of threats of terror and devastation. In a public manifesto of October, 1778, which he ordered distributed to all members of the Congress, to George Washington and all American generals, to all provincial governors and assemblies, to all ministers of the Gospel and commanders of the British forces and prison camps, he proclaimed in the name of the Peace Commission that the Colonies having made alliance with the enemy of Britain, it became Britain’s duty “by every means in her power to destroy or render useless a connexion contrived for her ruin”; in short, to replace the “humanity and benevolence with which she had hitherto pursued the war” by sterner practices. Carlisle’s notion of benevolence addressed to people who in every colony had already suffered pillage and destruction, the burning of villages and the laying waste of farms, fields and timberlands, did not lend him credibility. Taking advantage of his threats, Congress recommended to local authorities that the British text should be published in gazettes of their districts, “to convince the good people of these states of the
insidious designs” of the Peace Commission.

Military ill success and the personal humiliation of the Peace Commission had prompted the commissioners to issue the manifesto known as the Carlisle Proclamation. Its expressed threats were modest compared to the intentions of its first unpublished draft, proposing “a scheme of universal devastation,” to be applied by the army and fleet, which its author fondly believed “will have
effect
.” A test came in Connecticut. Whether or not taking its cue from the Carlisle Proclamation, a short campaign of terror was carried out by Governor Tryon of New York in July, 1779. Compared by Henry Laurens to the operations of the Duke of Alva, in dreadful memory of the Spanish Terror, the Connecticut raid was no massacre, but vicious enough to stimulate rather than subdue resistance, a well-known effect of such measures, and to induce residents to record the events in many journals.

Apart from geographical convenience, Connecticut was chosen because it had made itself obnoxious to the British in and around New York by manufacturing munitions for the colonials and furnishing more troops for the rebel cause than any other colony except Massachusetts, and by launching frequent raids on land and water that interfered with
the military plans of Sir Henry Clinton, the British Commander-in-Chief. Moreover, its population was counted as three-quarters disloyal. Clinton had decided upon “severe punishment” to be inflicted by a force of 3,000 troops coming from New York under the command of Major General Tryon, Governor of New York, and to be joined by 2,000 sailors and marines crossing from Long Island in 48 transports with tenders escorted by two warships. The largest collection of ships that had ever entered Long Island Sound, the armada made an impressive sight as it came up to New Haven and anchored in the early light of dawn July 5, 1779.

On the previous day, July 4, Tryon had issued an eloquent proclamation distributed in printed copies evidently thought to be truly persuasive, for although their effect, he reported, “cannot be discovered until further operations and descent upon their coast,” he expected his words to awaken “terror and despondency” among the people of the coast, whom he believed to be “already divided and easily impressible.” He told them that their lives and “the existence of their habitations on your defenceless coast showed Britain’s forbearance and lenity in its mild and noble efforts.” He urged the population to give up their “ungenerous and wanton insurrection into which they had been deluded by designing men for private purposes.” In this plea, General Tryon reflected the enduring British belief, which held Britain to the expectation of an early victory around the corner, that the mass of Americans were basically loyal and only waiting to overturn demagogues and agitators to come back to their old allegiance. “Can the strength of your whole province,” continued the proclamation, “cope with the force of Great Britain? You are conscious it cannot. Why then, will you persist in a ruinous and ill-judged resistance? We hoped you would recover from the frenzy which had distracted this unhappy country and we believe the day will come when the greater part of this continent will blush at their delusion.”

How was it possible for Tryon, Governor of a colony, to know so little of the people he was fighting? Only the year before, giving firm notice of their intent, Connecticut and six other colonies—two from New England, two from the mid-Atlantic and two from the South—signed the Articles of Confederation that were to be the foundation of the United States of America.

At sunrise on July 5, a gunshot from the ships of Tryon’s raid sounded the signal for landing. Instantly, a string of boats filled with redcoats was seen dropping astern from every transport and pulling directly for
shore. They were met by a biting blaze of musket fire from a people who proved less “impressible” than supposed. Warned in advance by compatriots in New York of Tryon’s coming, defenders armed with ancient long-range Queen Anne muskets poured into New Haven from nearby towns to a total of several thousand. Knowing every tree and fence, and fighting for their homes and rights, they fired upon the invaders from the protection of the tall Indian corn now at its full July height. As excellent marksmen, they severely damaged General Tryon’s assumptions, but they could not repel his numbers nor save their homes and neighbors from pillage, fire and murder. The sharp crack of musketry and the smoke of burning buildings marked the invaders’ line of march. Smashing their way into every house, they tore and trampled on furnishings, piled up furniture to set it in flame, beat, raped and savaged the residents, and in one case murdered an aged and defenseless victim. He was Mr. Benjamin English, who, according to an account in the
Connecticut Journal
two days later, reproved a group of drunken redcoats for rough and insulting behavior to his daughter when they broke into his house demanding refreshments. They ran him through the body several times with bayonets. His daughter, on entering the room where he lay on the floor bleeding as he died, cried out, “Oh! How could you murder my poor old father so cruelly?” One of the soldiers asked “Is he your father?” and at her reply of “Yes,” he stamped upon the old man’s chest and upturned face, crushing his nose.

In the midst of the skirmish in New Haven, a body of students from Yale College, marching to meet the enemy, raised a cheer as they saw their former president, the Reverend Dr. Naphtali Daggett, astride his old black mare and carrying his fowling piece ready for action, riding furiously to the attack. Professor of divinity and president of Yale for nine years, he galloped past and soon was seen standing alone on a nearby hillside, firing upon the advancing British column. Coming up, the officer of the column shouted, “What are you doing there, you old fool, firing on His Majesty’s troops?” Firmly, Daggett replied, “Exercising the rights of war.” Asked whether, if his life were spared, he would do such a thing again, he answered, “Nothing more likely. I rather think I should.” Cool defiance can invite respect, if only temporary. Instead of shooting him, the soldiers permitted Daggett to surrender and marched him back to town at the point of their bayonets, wounding him with small stabs as they pricked him forward under the burning midday sun of the hottest day, one observer said, he had ever
known. “The stoutest man almost melted in the heat.” When the Reverend’s strength failed and he was ready to sink to the ground in exhaustion, the soldiers drove him on with blows and bruises from the barrels of their guns and stripped his shoes from him to take their silver buckles, while they called him a “damned old rebel” and a thousand insults. Bleeding from his wounds, he was finally left where neighbors took him in and cared for him, but the battering had been too much. He died within the year—as everyone firmly believed, from the treatment he had received.

Two churches and a meetinghouse were burned at New Haven, which Tryon excused on the ground that they had caught fire accidentally from houses burning nearby. Papers and manuscripts taken from Yale College were not recovered, despite the indignant protest of President Ezra Stiles to Tryon, telling him that a war “against science” had been “reprobated for ages by the wisest and most powerful generals.” As the Duke of Alva would not have done, Tryon actually replied, saying that an inquiry had turned up no information about the papers. It was an insignificant item amid tragedy that did not end at New Haven. Governor Tryon’s forces moved on to pillage and burn Fairfield and Norwalk and destroy the salt pans at Horse Neck before they re-embarked for New York.

What could they have thought to gain by this persecution of civilians—to persuade Americans to give up their cause and return obediently to the sovereignty of Britain? To be worth the effort, war requires a rational objective, political and, in the short run, military, not just foolish aggression. Ultimately, the end sought is surrender of the enemy and the giving up of his purpose, whatever it may be, by the military destruction of his armed forces and his supporting resources, by penetration and occupation of his territory, by fear and despair induced in the population by terror. From the days of the Tarquins on the banks of the Tiber to the Germans in Belgium in 1914 and again at Lidice in Czechoslovakia in 1942, when every adult of the town was collected in a group and shot dead in retaliation for some act of resistance, this method has rarely brought the desired results, unless it is total and undeviating. Did Clinton and Tryon expect otherwise? More likely they and their soldiers were simply moved to vent violence by the angry frustration of unsuccessful war, which is what usually generates atrocity—as in the case of the Americans at My Lai—except when it is authorized and organized from above, as in the case of the Spanish in
the Netherlands, the Japanese in China and the Germans in both World Wars. It is always possible to say, and is always said afterward, that the agents were merely acting on orders of higher authority, but when does normal inhibition in the common soldier or other agent cry stop? If inhibition has been systematically weakened by prevailing policy, it does not operate.