Volume 2, Chapter 40, The American Colonies and the War
During the French and Indian War, Americans continued the great tradition of trading with
the enemy, and even more readily than before. As in King George's War, Newport took the
lead. Other vital centers were New York and Philadelphia. The individualistic Rhode Islanders
angrily turned Governor Stephen Hopkins out of office for embroiling Rhode Island in a
foreign war between England and France. Rhode Island blithely disregarded the embargo against
trade with the enemy and redoubled its commerce with France. Rhode Island's ships also functioned
as one of the major sources of supply for French Canada during the war. In the fall
In the fall of 1757, William Pitt was told that the Rhode Islanders are a lawless set
of smugglers who continually supply the enemy with what provisions they want.
The Crown ordered royal governors to embargo exports of food and to break up the extensive
traffic with the West Indies, but shippers again resorted to flags of truce and trade
through neutral ports in the West Indies. Monte Christi, in Spanish Hispaniola, proved
to be a particularly popular intermediary port. The flags of truth devise particularly
irritated the British, and the lucrative sale of this privilege, with the prisoners' names
left blank, was indulged in by Governors William Denny of Pennsylvania and Francis Bernard
of New Jersey. French prisoners for token exchanges under the flags were rare and therefore
at a premium, and merchants in Philadelphia and New York paid high prices for these prisoners
to Newport privateers. The peak of this trade came in 1759, for in the following year, with
the end of the war with New France, the Royal Navy was able to turn its attention to this
is trade, and virtually suppress it. However, in the words of Professor Breidenball, privateering
and trade with the enemy might have their ups and downs, but then, as now, government
contracts seem to entail little risk and to pay off handsomely. Particularly feeding at
the trough of government war contracts were specifically privileged merchants of New York
American Pennsylvania. Two firms of London merchants were especially influential in handing
out British war contracts to their favorite American correspondents. Thus, the highly
influential London firm of John Tomlinson and John Hanbury, who was deeply involved
in the Ohio Company, received a huge war contract. The firm designated Charles Apthorpe and
and Company, its Boston representative, and Colonel William Bayard, its representative
in New York. In addition, the powerful London merchant Moses Franks arranged for his relatives
and friends David Franks of Philadelphia and Jacob Franks, John Watts and the powerful
Oliver Delancey of New York to be made government agents. New York, furthermore, was made the
concentration point for the British forces and the general storehouse of arms and ammunition,
thus permitting many merchants to amass fortunes as subcontractors if they enjoyed the proper family
connections. By 1761, however, all the great ports in America were suffering badly from the
severe dislocation of trade wrought by the war. Smuggling and trading with the enemy were not the
The only forms of American resistance to British dictation during the French and Indian War.
During the French Wars of the 1740s, Boston had been the center of violent resistance
to conscription for the war effort, an effort that decimated the Massachusetts male population.
During the French and Indian War, Massachusetts continued as the most active center of resistance
to Conscription, and of widespread desertion, often en masse, from the militia.
Thomas Pownell took over as governor of Massachusetts in early 1757 and cracked down bitterly on
Massachusetts liberties. He sent troops outside Massachusetts without assembly permission,
threatened to punish justices of the peace who did not enforce the laws against desertion,
hitherto interpreted with salutary neglect, and threatened Boston with military occupation
if the assembly did not agree to the arrival and quartering of British troops.
In November, English recruiting officers appeared in Boston, and the assembly and the Boston
magistrates forbade any recruiting or any quartering of troops in the town.
Pownell vetoed these actions as violations of the royal prerogative, especially in emergencies.
The magistrates then countered by detaining recruiting officers in order to investigate
them as potential carriers of disease.
When Pownell tried to frighten the Massachusetts assembly with the French threat, it cogently
The legislature insisted on the natural rights of the people of Massachusetts to defend which they would resist to the last breath, a cruel invading army.
As their commander-in-chief, Lord Loudon, was threatening, Massachusetts would resist
the troops by force. The legislature insisted on the natural rights of the people of Massachusetts
to defend which they would resist to the last breath, a cruel invading army. Lord Loudon
was threatening to send his army from Long Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania to compel
and all the quartering of troops in Boston.
In exasperation, Lord Loudon wrote to Governor Pownall in December 1757,
they, the Massachusetts Assembly, attempt to take away the King's undoubted prerogative.
They attempt to take away an act of the British Parliament.
They attempt to make it impossible for the King either to keep troops in North America
The Massachusetts Legislature finally agreed to permit the quartering of troops, but formally insisted that this quartering come under its own authority and not that of England or its governor.
So few citizens of Massachusetts volunteered for the 1758 campaign that Governor Pownall resorted to the hated device of conscription.
Resentment among the people was intensified by such British recruiting methods as dragging drunken men into the army.
The people erupted angrily in a series of riots, attacking and beating up recruiting squads,
all of which required the British to retain a large troop in Massachusetts to crush an imminent rebellion.
The Massachusetts draftees then resorted to the silent but effective nonviolent resistance of mass desertions, refusal to obey the hated officers, and going on sick call.
Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson was appointed to round up deserters, and hundreds were betrayed by the government's network of paid informers.
The people's resentment and resistance were intensified by the economic depression in Massachusetts caused by high taxes for the war effort.
Following the disastrous Ticonderoga campaign in 1758, the English general James Wolfe wrote in vehemence and despair that
The Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending upon them in action. They desert by battalions, officers and all.
Other officials and observers remarked wonderingly of the individualistic spirit of the militia men, almost every man his own master and a general.
With the militia officers democratically elected by their men, the notion of liberty so generally prevails that they are impatient under all kinds of superiority and authority.
Moreover, the Americans added a new concept to the age-old European peasant and yeoman practice of desertion, the assassination of officers who would not cooperate.
Even in the following years of English victory, the Massachusetts militia continued its resistance.
In 1759, it refused to remain at Lake Champlain for the winter, mutinied against its officers, and returned home.
The following year, the Massachusetts militia refused to go from Nova Scotia to Quebec and mutinied again.
General Jeffrey Amherst had high-handedly decided in late 1759 to keep the Massachusetts troops in Nova Scotia over the winter of 1759-60, despite the fact that their terms of enlistment had expired.
The men unanimously announced their refusal to serve any longer and wrote to the commander demanding that they be sent home.
The Americans were all placed under guard thereafter. The British decided to shoot
the mutinous colonist, but bloodshed was averted at the last minute when the
Massachusetts General Court extended the terms of enlistment to six months and
sweetened the pill with an extra bonus of four pounds per soldier. By spring,
however, the men in the General Court remained firm. The troops unanimously
So anxious were the Massachusetts soldiers to leave to go home that a party of them commandeered a ship and set sail for home. It was wholly in vain that Amherst demanded British-style discipline for these rebellious, democratically governed militiamen.
Large numbers of deserting sailors, furthermore, left to join the merchant marine for large-scale smuggling and trade with the enemy.
New York City was a lively center for deserting sailors, and New York merchants systematically hid the sailors from the British troops.
The British compelled their return in 1757 by threatening to conduct a deliberately brutal and thorough house-to-house search
Research, and to treat New York as a conquered city. British troops were quartered upon New
York against the vehement opposition of the citizens they were supposedly protecting.
In Philadelphia, pacifist mobs repeatedly attacked recruiting officers and even lynched
one in February 1756. In general, continuing conflict raged between English commanders
who wanted complete control over the colonial militia and the assemblies, which insisted
on definite limitations on militia service.
American disaffection with the war effort was particularly marked after 1756, when the
limited campaign to grab Ohio lands was succeeded by full-scale war against French Canada.
Americans, during the Seven Years' War, pursued a policy of trading with the enemy.
The British bitterly alienated the other countries of Europe by repudiating all the cherished
principles of international law on the sea that had been worked out over the past century.
The developed and agreed upon principle of international law was that neutral ships were
were entitled to trade with a warring country without molestation by any belligerent. Free
ships make free goods, unless the goods were actual armaments. After finally agreeing to
this civilized principle of international law in the late 17th century, England now
returned to the piratical practice of attacking neutral ships trading with France and of stopping
In Searching Neutral Ships on the High Seas England had long been the major opponent of
rational international law and of the great libertarian concept of freedom of the seas,
which formed an integral part of that law. Neutral's rights were corollary of that concept,
as was the doctrine that no nation could claim ownership or sovereignty of the seas, that
In fact, the citizens of any nation could use the open seas to trade, travel, or fish where
they would. During the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth had not accepted the grandiose claims
of the mystic astrologer Dr. John Dee of England's claim to ownership of the surrounding seas.
After all, England was then engaged in asserting freedom of the seas against the presumed Spanish
of the Nation, Portuguese Monopolies of the newly discovered oceans.
But after the accession of the stewards, Spain was no longer a grave threat to the seas,
and England's overriding maritime interest was to destroy the highly efficient and competitive
Dutch shipping.
Very early in his reign, James I claimed ownership of the surrounding seas and the fish therein,
President Charles I arrogantly claimed sovereignty over the entire North Sea.
In opposition to the Stuart pretensions, the great Dutch father of international law, the
liberal Hugo Grotius, laid down the principle of freedom of the seas in his Mare Liberum
in 1609 and integrated the principle into the natural law structure of international
Law, in his definitive treatise of 1625, De jure belli ac pocus.
Grotius was able to build upon the 16th century writings of the great liberal Spanish jurist
and scholastics Francis Alfonso de Castro, Ferdinand Váquez Menchaya, and Francisco
Suárez, who flourished even in a time when the Spanish interest was in proclaiming its
and Sovereignty of the Seas.
Grotius's libertarian view of freedom of the seas
could expect to meet stern opposition in many countries,
but the greatest opposition was in England,
where the stewards mobilized scholars in their defense.
The lean opponents of Grotius and celebrants of governmental
and especially English sovereignty over the seas
were the Scott Professor, William Wellwood, 1613,
The Italian Board Oxford Regius Professor, Albertus Gentilis, 1613, who proclaimed absolute
English ownership of the Atlantic as far west as America, Sir John Burroughs, Royal Bureaucrat,
1633, and John Seldon, 1635. England continued its grandiose claims during the 17th century,
But with its shipping ever more extensive by the end of the century, it began to consent
to be bound by international law on the high seas. England had also been the major opponent
of neutral rights in time of war and the Dutch their major advocate. However, in the Treaty
of 1674 with Holland, England finally agreed to the vital rule of free ships, free goods,
and Protection of Neutral Shipping, a principle that France and Spain had at least formally
ratified two decades before.
But now, on the opening of the Seven Years' War, England arrogantly informed the Dutch
and other neutrals that any of their ships trading with France would be treated as enemy
vessels.
Theoretician of this British reversion to official piracy was the Tory Jacobite Charles
Jenkinson. Britain's arrogant attacks on neutral shipping and violations of international law
during the Seven Years' War alienated all the neutral countries of Europe, who soon
Being raised to cry to return to freedom of the seas, particularly harassed was the highly
efficient Dutch shipping, and fellow sufferers from British policy were Spain, Portugal,
Sweden, Russia, Naples, Tuscany, Genoa and Sardinia.