LX. Feb. listment for a long period," said Sherman, "is a state CHAP. of slavery; a rotation of service in arms is favorable to liberty." "I am in favor of the proposition to 1776. raise men for the war," said John Adams; "but not to depend upon it, as men must be averse to it, and the war may last ten years." Congress was not in a mood to adopt decisive measures; and the touching entreaties of the general were passed by unheeded. England was sending over veteran armies; and they were to be met by soldiers engaged only for a year. The debate branched off into a discussion on the pay of officers, respecting which the frugal statesmen of the north differed from those of the south; John Adams thought the democratic tendency in New Eng land less dangerous than the aristocratic tendency elsewhere; and Harrison seemed to insinuate that the war was a New England war. But it was becoming Mar. plain that danger hung over every part of the country; on the twenty seventh, the five middle colonies from New York to Maryland were therefore constituted one military department, the four, south of the Potomac, another; and on the first of March, six new generals of brigade were appointed. In the selection for Virginia there was difficulty: Patrick Henry had been the first colonel in her army; but the committee of safety did not favor his military ambition, and the prevailing opinion recalled him to civil life; in the judgment of Washington, "Mercer would have supplied the place well;" but he was a native of Scotland; so the choice fell upon Andrew Lewis, whose courage Washington did not question, but who still suffered from "the odium thrown upon his conduct at Kanawha," where he had lingered in his camp, while the officers Mar. CHAP. and men, whom he sent forth, with fearless gallantry LX. and a terrible loss of life, shed over Virginia a lustre 1776. that reached to Tennessee and Kentucky. Congress soon repented of its election; and in less than a year forced Lewis to resign, by promoting an officer of very little merit over his head. To meet the expenses of the war, four millions of dollars in bills were ordered to be struck; which, with six millions already issued, would form a paper currency of ten millions. A few days later a committee of seven, including Duane and Robert Morris, was appointed on the ways and means of raising the supplies for the year, over and above the emission of bills of credit; but they never so much as made a report. Another committee was appointed, continued, and enlarged, and their labors were equally fruitless. Congress had neither credit to borrow nor power to tax. An officious and unauthorized suggestion from Lord Drummond to send a deputation to England in quest of "liberal terms founded in equity and candor," could claim no notice; the want of supplies, which was so urgent that two thousand men in Washington's army were destitute of arms and unable to procure them, led to an appeal in a different direc tion; and Silas Deane, a graduate of Yale College, at one time a schoolmaster, afterwards a trader; reputed in congress to be well versed in commercial affairs; superficial, yet able to write and speak readily and plausibly; wanting deliberate forecast, accurate information, solidity of judgment, secrecy, and integrity;-finding himself left out of the delegation from Connecticut, whose confidence he never pos LX. Mar. sessed, solicited and received from the committee of CHAP. secret correspondence an appointment as commercial commissioner and agent to France. That country, the 1776. committee instructed him to say, "is pitched upon for the first application, from an opinion that if we should, as there is appearance we shall, come to a total separation with Great Britain, France would be the power whose friendship it would be fittest for us to obtain and cultivate." The announcement was coupled with a request for clothing and arms for twenty five thousand men, a hundred fieldpieces, and a suitable quantity of ammunition. This was the act of a committee; congress was itself about to send commissioners to Canada, and their instructions, reported by John Adams, Wythe, and Sherman, contained this clause: "You are to declare, that it is our inclination that the people of Canada may set up such a form of government as will be most likely in their judgment to produce their happiness." This invitation to the Canadians to form a government without any limitation of time, was, for three or four hours, resisted by Jay and others, on the ground that it "was an independency;" but the words were adopted, and they foreshadowed a similar decision for each one of the United Colonies. Congress had received the act of parliament prohibiting all trade with the thirteen colonies, and confiscating their ships and effects as if they were the ships and effects of open enemies. The first instinct was to retaliate; and on the sixteenth of March a committee of the whole considered the propriety of authorizing the inhabitants of the colonies to fit out privateers. Again it appeared that there CHAP. were those who still listened to the hope of relief LX. through Rockingham, or of redress through the royal 1776. commissioners, though the act of parliament conferMar. red on them no power but to pardon. On the other hand, Franklin wished that the measure should be preceded by a declaration of war, as of one independent nation against another. The question was resumed on the eighteenth; and after an able debate, privateers were authorized to cruise against ships and their cargoes belonging to any inhabitant, not of Ireland or the West Indies, but of Great Britain, by the vote of all New England, New York, Virginia, and North Carolina, against Pennsylvania and Maryland. The other colonies were not sufficiently represented to give their voices. On the nineteenth, Wythe, with Jay and Wilson, was appointed to prepare a preamble to the resolutions. Wythe found himself in a minority in the committee; and when, on the twenty second, he presented their report, he moved an amendment, charging the king himself with their grievances, inasmuch as he had “rejected their petitions with scorn and contempt." This was new ground: hitherto congress had disclaimed the authority of parliament, not allegiance to the crown. Jay, Wilson, and Johnson opposed the amendment, as effectually severing the king from the thirteen colonies forever; it was supported by Richard Henry Lee, who seconded it, by Chase, Sergeant of New Jersey, and Harrison. At the end of four hours Maryland interposed its veto, and thus put off the decision for a day; but on the twenty third the language of Wythe was accepted. The question of opening the ports, after having LX. been for months the chief subject of deliberation, was CHAP. discussed through all the next fortnight. One kind of traffic which the European maritime powers still 1776. Apr. encouraged, was absolutely forbidden, not from political reasons merely, but from a conviction of its unrighteousness and cruelty; and without any limitation as to time, or any reservation of a veto to the respective colonies, it was resolved, "that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies." The vote was pregnant with momentous consequences. From the activity of the trade in the preceding years, the negro race had been gaining relatively upon the white; and as its power consists in the combined force of its numbers and its intelligence, it might in some part of the continent have endangered the supremacy of the white man; but he was sure to increase more rapidly than the negro, now that the continent was barred against further importations of slaves. The prohibition made moreover a revolution in the state of the black men already in America; from a body of laborers, many of them barbarians, perpetually recruited and increased from barbarous African tribes, they were transformed into an insulated class, living in a state of domesticity, dependent for culture, employment, and support on a superior race; and it was then the prevailing opinion, especially in Virginia, that the total prohibition of the slave trade would, at no very distant day, be followed by universal emancipation. The first who, as far as appears, suggested that negroes might be emancipated and a " public provision be made to transport them to Africa, where they might probably live better than in other country," any |