Volume 4, Chapter 24, Polarization in England and the German Response to Renting Hessians
During 1775 and early 1776, as we have seen, the American conflict escalated and intensified step by step,
as the military clashes widened on land and at sea, as the British cracked down bitterly on the revolutionaries,
as militant measures were taken against Americans loyal to Britain and as the Continental Congress opened diplomatic relations, organized the war effort and opened the ports to foreign trade and supplies in defiance of the time-honored British laws of trade.
As the conflict got underway and for many months thereafter, most of the American leaders had conservative aims and goals.
They aimed not at all at independence, but at intensifying the old pressure of the boycott to bring Britain to her senses and to abandon her recent policy of aggressive imperial domination.
Others, at least, realized that Britain would adopt a hard-line policy of crushing the rebellion in exorably pushing the Americans into greater conflict, but only a handful of the most radical and prescient leaders fought eagerly for the maximum goal, independence.
They realized that France would only be interested in aiding an American movement that would aim for independence and not for eventual reconciliation and strengthening of the British Empire.
Moreover, they saw that in the difficult war ahead, only American independence would provide the necessary inspiration for waging the struggle.
The radicals realized, as Curtis Nettles has written, that
the Americans had arrived at a crossroads of history.
Backward, the road led to monarchy, serfdom, oppression.
Ahead was visible the trace of a new path leading to emancipation, freedom and self-government.
Should Congress take the road backward to the oppressions of the old world,
or build a new road to the summit discernible in the distance.
It was independence that offered an inspiring prospect,
nothing less than the creation of a new nation,
a great republic dedicated to rights of man.
New England, the center of liberalism and democracy,
with its tradition of virtual independence,
had little difficulty in visualizing American independence.
But as long as Massachusetts was the focal point of conflict with Britain, it and the rest of New England had to tread warily in Congress.
Leveling New England was under enough suspicion as it was from the other colonies,
and it would have been suicidal for it to take the lead in advocating independence, a most unpopular concept, in 1775.
Massachusetts and its chief radicals, the Adams's, had to lie low, waiting for the
lead for militancy and eventual independence to be taken by Virginia, the foremost and
the most radical colony in the South.
This was a further consideration in the decision to give George Washington command of the Continental
Army.
He was an uncommon blend of impeccable conservative on social and political matters, and yet,
Yet a militant in the fight against Britain.
Yet the radicals had a difficult row to hoe indeed, for Congress began firmly in the hands
of conservatives who would not consider independence, such leaders as John Jay, James Dwayne, John
Alsop, Philip Schuler, and Philip and Robert Livingston of New York, John Dickinson, James
Thomas Wilson and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, Thomas Johnson of Maryland, Benjamin Harrison
of Virginia, Thomas Lynch in the Rutleges of South Carolina, and Dr. John Zubly of Georgia.
Even New England had conservative delegates, Silas Deane of Connecticut, and Thomas Cushing
and the waffling and petulant John Hancock of Massachusetts.
If such a formidable array, the Adamses, Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, could only fume
in private and await the passage of time that they firmly believed would be on their side.
The superior insight of the radicals was partly due to their superior information on political
conditions in Great Britain and on the formidable strength of the Tory forces. The prime source
One of the authors of this information was Arthur Lee, who was functioning as a one-man committee of correspondence from London from the late 1760s, sending his news and evaluations to the Adamses and other radical leaders.
Lee and his other brother William, a merchant settled in London who had become important in London politics,
reported clearly the feebleness and decline of the Whigs and Radicals,
as well as the triumphal successes of the imperialist and Tories and the subservience of a corrupt parliament.
The American Radicals soon saw this estimate of the temper of the British government confirmed
as the King brusquely refused even to receive Dickinson's olive branch petition and issued the staunchly hardline Proclamation of Rebellion on August 23, 1775.
The proclamation absurdly denounced the Americans as rebels and traitors who had now brought long-laid designs and traitorous conspiracies to open rebellion and war.
The King announced that he would bring traders to justice and condine punishment.
This was quickly followed by a royal order to seize the ships of Americans or all those
trading with America. And the royal authorities expressed their determination to proceed against
the Americans as open and announced enemies of the state. In England, the Whig and liberal
Many English merchants were beguiled by the temporary expansion of markets in Europe, aided by the recent peace between Russia and Turkey, and by the lure of government war contracts.
The mass of the people were seduced by a wave of patriotism as well as the desire to force the Americans to pay part of their tax burden.
The aristocratic Whig leadership, always inclined to luxurious indolence, decided against the efforts of Edmund Burke to arouse them and instead to give up and absent themselves from Parliament.
Burke did his best to work for peace on his own and roused peace petitions from London and his constituency in Bristol, but all in vain. Indeed, more people in Bristol addressed their support of the government on the American War.
Burke's persistent appeals to the Marquis of Rockingham and the Whigs to oppose the war vigorously was not simple impetuosity.
It was based on profound insight into the proper strategy for a party truly in opposition to the existing regime.
Vigorous opposition, though in a weak minority at the time, would not be at all futile.
On the contrary, local opposition would inform people of the available alternative to which they might turn in anger when present policy became bankrupt.
bankrupt. But for such an angry turn toward a radical change of the system, there must
be skilled leadership and direction. There must be a vanguard. As Burke wrote, to bring
the people to a feeling, as tends to amendment or alteration of system, there must be plan
and management. All direction of public humor and opinion must originate in a few. He vainly
urged on the Whigs a large and powerful nationwide petition movement, which would remain permanently
in operation as a network of local committees of correspondence to serve as the lever of
dynamic political change.
The eloquent young Charles James Fox, a son of Henry Fox, enclosed to the Whig party,
also argued against the Britons' war against the Americans. The Pittites opposed the war
too, but were enfeebled by the chronic illness of Lord Chatham.
Leading individual Whigs did make their mark by refusing to serve in the armed forces against
the Americans, and these came to include Lord Effingham, an army officer, and the great
Admiral Augustus Keppel.
Meanwhile, the radical movement in Britain had fallen into rapid decline.
John Wilkes' triumphal entry into Parliament in 1774 as well as into London politics marked
the beginning not of new triumphs for the Wilkite movement but of its collapse.
In any age of Tory ascendance, Wilkes proved to have been a far better radical leader in
disgrace than in positions of power or influence.
In fact, having realized his civic and parliamentary ambitions, it seemed that he no longer sought,
or depended on, the acclaim of the lower orders of citizens.
He was still a liberal opposed to the war, however, and he warned that victory would
be hollow, since the Americans could not be kept permanently in subjection, even by large
forces of occupation.
In order to abandon the radical position, Wilkes was to remain for a while an undistinguished
liberal member of Parliament. But he began to follow the classic ever rightward path
of the renegade radical until, after two decades, he died in the odor and sanctity of the new
Toryism. The radical cause in 1776 had become more abundant in Britain, a state aggravated
by Parliament's recent re-imposition of a high tax on newspapers, crippling the cheap
and popular press that had served as a vehicle for gaining support of the cause from the
masses. Of the radicals, only the doubty Reverend John Horn managed to remain active. He took
up a collection in London in June 1775 for widows and orphans of the Americans murdered
by the British troops. He was promptly sent to prison for his audacity. It is significant of the decline of British radicalism that his arrest evoked none of the popular agitation generated by the imprisonment of John Wilkes in 1763.
In their desperate state, the various liberal and opposition groups began to draw hesitantly
together and to become increasingly radicalized by the American crisis.
They soon realized that their only hope lay in a drastic British defeat at the hands of
the Americans.
Openly favoring the American cause, they grew more radical in their proffered solutions.
Burke, who habitually dealt in terms of utility and expediency or else tradition, now acknowledged
in part the validity of the American stress on their rights. Yet he was gradually being
outflanked on his left. The Earl of Shelburne and other Chattamites, along with the London
radicals, called for repeal of the declaratory acts asserting full parliamentary sovereignty
over America, including the right of taxation. And Charles James Fox was calling for repeal
of every British measure toward America passed since 1763. With the liberal and radical movements
weak and in disarray, the field was wide open for the hard-line apostles of force and suppression.
Bunker Hill was characteristically taken not as a signal to stop and think, but as a stain
to Britain's Honor, to be avenged as quickly and forcefully as possible. Only Lord Dartmouth,
the Colonial Secretary, stood out against the war policy of the Cabinet, but with no
success. So widespread was British support for suppression that the manufacturing centers
of Manchester, Lancaster, Liverpool and Bristol presented pro-government addresses. Driven
Known by the King and by the War Party in control of the rest of the Cabinet and of
popular opinion, the equivocal Prime Minister Lord North was forced to press the war with
vigor. He raised troops, relieved General Gage and Vice Admiral Samuel Graves, who were
considered dilatory by the War Party, and sent five Irish regiments to America. In the
The autumn of 1775, moreover, the two cabinet moderates lost their posts. The Whig, Duke
of Grafton, went into opposition in bitter protest against the war, and Lord Dartmouth
lost the key post of Colonial Secretary to hard-line Lord George Germain, a man bitterly
opposed to appeasement of the colonies. Strengthening hard-line dominance over public opinion was
as a pamphlet published in 1775 by the eminent Tory literary critic, Samuel Johnson. With
his accustomed perceptiveness, Johnson, in Taxation, No Tyranny, warned that the logical
conclusion of the libertine and American hostility to taxation was no taxation at all, or anarchy.
The World War Petitions, inspired by the government, denounced the sophisticated arguments and
seditious correspondence of a few disappointed men who were responsible for diluting the
Americans into rebellion. The Ministry propounded a similar line. Indeed, more serious than
the imprisonment of John Horn was the arrest on a charge of treason of the radical alderman
and leading London banker, Stephen Sayre, whom Burke and other Whigs were refused permission
to visit in prison. Similar treatment for the Whig leaders was hinted to be in the offing,
though Sayre was eventually able to sue successfully for false arrest. Having agreed to prosecute
the war vigorously, North attempted to offer peace terms to the Americans. After a great
Deal of Wrangling with Germain and the War Party, he won an agreement in May 1776 to
send as peace commissioners to America General Sir William Howe and his brother the Whig
Admiral Richard Lord Howe, the newly appointed commander of the fleet in American waters.
This wrangling was a waste of time for the peace terms merely amounted to a demand for
for American Submission in Exchange for Instituting North's Rejected Plan of Conciliation and
a Plan to Consider American Grievances. There was not the ghost of a chance that the Americans
would submit. As Professor Richeson comments, the terms thus held out were those a victorious
and reasonably benevolent mother country might have granted to discouraged and chastised
But the Americans, of course, were neither beaten nor discouraged.
Lord North's first task in prosecuting the war was to raise 20,000 men to send to the American colonies.
Rather than annoy the British people by raising the troops at home,
he determined to use Britain's vast wealth to hire mercenary troops from other governments.
He turned first to Russia, which had been substantially helped by Britain to defeat Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74.
Russia had installed King Stanislaus as its puppet ruler in Poland, and in 1768 the liberal Polish Country Party, or Confederation of Bar,
led by Counts Joseph and Casimir Pulaski rose in rebellion against the king.
By 1772, the Polish rebellion was crushed, and Poland suffered the loss of one-third of its territory and half of its population in the first partition by Russia and Prussia.
Turkey had decided to aid the Polish rebels, earning the belligerent attention of Russia.
But Russia's gratitude to Britain for its aid in the war had cooled.
The German-born Empress Catherine the Great had come strongly under the influence of Prussia,
and Frederick the Great of Prussia was peeved at Britain for what he considered unsatisfactory
peace terms after the Seven Years' War.
After much backing and filling and seeming agreement, Catherine finally refused Britain's
request.
Roth turned next to the Dutch.
Ever since the accession to the English throne of William of Orange in 1688, the Dutch House
of Orange had been subservient to Great Britain.
They had been governed during the first half of the 18th century by the Libertarian Republican
Party, which pursued a policy of thoroughgoing decentralization, minimal government and profitable
neutrality in Europe's wars.
During the war of Austrian succession, Britain had engineered a coup by the House of Orange.
The Republic was overthrown, and William IV of Orange was installed as Stadtholder of
the Dutch provinces.
Now Great Britain asked the Dutch to supply the needed troops, specifically the Scotch
Brigade.
This brigade originally consisted of Scotsmen, but was now largely comprised of Walloons
from the southern Netherlands.
The House of Orange was, of course, willing to agree, but the Prince of Orange was by
no means the autocratic ruler of Holland, and the Republican-led assemblies of most
of the provinces vetoed the scheme.
Eloquent opposition to providing the troops was expressed by John Dirk, who, citing English
depredations upon the sea and upon Dutch commerce, declared that the Americans were contending
for their liberty just as the Dutch themselves had fought for their independence as rebels
against Spain in the late 16th century.
Leading the successful opposition to troop aid to Britain in the interior Dutch province
of Overiesel was a man destined to become one of the most important figures in the international
revolutionary movement in the near future.
The nobleman, J.D. van der Kaepelin-Totepole, who broke precedent by making public his views
in the secret discussion within the provincial estates, van der Kaepelin, who also led the
movement to abolish corvée servitude by the peasants of the province, was in contact with
British radicals and was soon to correspond with the revolutionary governors of Connecticut
and New Jersey.
The substantial number of Republican merchants in the Dutch provinces also expressed their
opposition to British dictation by happily engaging in illicit trade with the rebellious
Americans and with the French, St. Eustatius in the Dutch West Indies serving as a crucial
entrepôt in the American trade.
Twice rebuffed in their search for mercenary troops, the British now turned to some of
The Petty Princes of Western and Southern Germany, who were always eager to augment their incomes
by renting out their troops. In January 1776, Britain received into its service 30,000 German
mercenaries from six principalities, including Hesse and Brunswick, of which three-fifths
The myths came from Hess Castle. Of the 30,000 troops, 7,500 were to perish during the war, either in battle or of disease.
Of the remaining 22,500, 5,000 were to desert to settle in the United States.
Some of these German troops were mere hired killers or soldiers of fortune.
Many were imbued with deep sympathy for the American cause, proving to be reluctant fighters
at best and often deserting outright to the American ranks.
In their discontent, the German troops at least partially reflected a wave of enthusiasm
for the revolutionary cause that was sweeping the intellectuals of Germany.
The Enlightenment had deeply penetrated into German thought and Rousseau and Voltaire were
read as widely in Germany as in America.
The rights of man were keenly admired and the German intellectuals saw with enthusiasm
that here was a new type of war, a war for liberty, a revolutionary war for an ideal
feel very different from the familiar European war of mercantilistic and dynastic plunder.
The rental of the troops to counter-revolutionary England ignited a torrent of protest in Germany.
The German poets were in the forefront of the protest, including the young poets Goethe
and Schiller.
The poets were moved to use the American struggle for liberty to protest directly or obliquely
against their own petty despotisms. The poet, Johann Voss, called courageously for Germans
to drain the cup of tyrant's blood to triumph. Leading the campaign was the romantic poet
and newspaper editor of Hortenberg, Christian F.D. Schubart, who had recently founded a
lively paper to help launch Germany's political press. Also avidly enthusiastic for the American
and Revolution was the poet Johann George Jacobi, who hailed the Americans as really
battling against despotism in all countries. An editor of a sentimental women's magazine,
Jacobi rhapsodized over revolutionary activities by the women of Pennsylvania. Another prominent
romantic libertarian poet of the revolution was Christopher M. Whelan, former jurist and
and Professor of Philosophy, who founded Der Tutsch Merkur, the most lively and popular
and most politically oriented paper in Germany.
Schubart and Jacobi were soon suppressed by their respective princes, but Whelan carried
on, and he was joined in advocating the American cause by more sober thinkers. These writings
These included a constitutional defense of the American case and of American smuggling,
and an attack on the navigation acts by Jacob Movillian, professor of military science at
Castle. Movillian was greatly influenced by the first modern economist, the French physiocrats
who had evolved a rigorous libertarian theory that included a commitment to a strictly laissez-faire
to their economy and to the natural rights of man.
Movilon declared the lesson of the American Revolution to be that, to avoid revolution,
the German states must abolish the statist repressions at home, including religious intolerance,
monopolies, guilds, taxes on agriculture, and economic burdens on trade and commerce.
Movillian's physiocracy, in turn, influenced his colleague, the statesman and economist Christian von Dome, who became the political commentator for Whelan's Mercure.
Von Dome criticized the vicious trade monopoly of the British mercantilist system and pointed out that American independence would be a great boon to the world if only because it would smash this monopoly.
Monopoly. He thereby summed up the German, indeed the European, radical hopes for the
American Revolution. Its success would create new routes for trade, new types of industry,
new connections between nations in various parts of the world. It can give wider circles
of influence to the enlightenment, new keenness to popular thought, new life to the spirit
of Freedom.