Volume 4, Chapter 65, Making Peace
As peace negotiations got underway, it became clear that the diplomatic interests of the powers were drawing apart.
France and Spain were less than enchanted about a potentially powerful United States that might eventually ally itself with England,
and Spain understandably wished to keep its conquest in the American Southwest.
For its part, England, already reconciled to American independence,
began to see that a peace settlement favorable to the United States
would weaken the dangerous Franco-American alliance
and secure a well-disposed country instead of an embittered ex-colony.
After much effort by France, Spain, despite its antipathy to the Revolution, had been induced to enter the war against Britain in the spring of 1779 by the lure of recapturing Gibraltar.
The secret treaty of Aranjuez between France and Spain in April 1779 had provided for Spain to enter the war, but violated France's terms of alliance with the United States by not insisting on American independence as a condition of peace.
Furthermore, Spain flatly refused to recognize the independence of the United States, although
it did send an envoy to the states who masqueraded as an observer.
And as we have seen, Spain provided aid and supplies to the American cause.
The most advanced doctrines of international law, set forth most recently in the American
and Plan of 1776 and the Franco-American Treaty of 1778 made neutral shipping in wartime free from seizure, except for contraband, which was strictly limited to munitions.
England, however, insisted on a far more restricted view of neutral rights and especially on the inclusion of naval stores, for example timber, in the category of contraband.
Goaded beyond endurance, the major European neutral powers banded together in a league of armed neutrality.
The league began on February 28, 1780, when the mercurial Empress Catherine II of Russia, after urging by France,
issued a declaration setting forth the most advanced principles of neutrals' rights
and promising the use of the Russian navy to defend Russian rights.
Even more important, Catherine invited other European neutrals to enter into conventions with her to enforce this code.
Denmark and Sweden accepted by August 1780, and their bilateral conventions were forged into a tripartite alliance for protection of their common rights.
Rights, incidentally, which Spain, but not England, promptly pledged to accept.
The Netherlands joined the armed neutrality in early January 1781. Britain, already enraged at the lucrative Dutch shipping and financial dealings with the United States, fell upon the Dutch at the end of 1780 in retaliation before Russian and other League ships could begin to protect the Dutch trade with America.
At war, the Dutch were ironically deprived of the benefits of membership in the League of Armed Neutrality.
Other powers joining the League later in the war were Prussia, Austria, Portugal and the two Sicilies.
While the League did not exert armed weight against Britain, its very existence served as a useful deterrent to British depredations of their shipping,
and it served to isolate and weaken Britain's position in Europe and the world.
In July 1780, John Adams was appointed negotiator with the Netherlands where he was able, in April 1782, to win Dutch recognition of the independence of the United States.
Now ministered to the Netherlands, Adams was able to negotiate a sizable loan from Amsterdam bankers and in October a treaty of amity and commerce between the Netherlands and the United States.
This agreement was modeled on the French treaty and affirmed the libertarian principles of neutrals rights declared in the previous treaty and in many other recent documents, including the Declaration of Armed Neutrality.
Spain's entry into the war in 1779 promptly highlighted an important problem with the future peace negotiations.
What would be the territory of the new United States of America?
East of the Appalachians there was no problem.
The Americans would be recognized as holding the territory of the thirteen states.
But what of the large and scarcely occupied lands of the West?
Would America be granted these? Spain, with its vast empire over Central and South America, its large territory of Louisiana, and an inquisitive eye on Florida and the Southwest, was keenly and negatively interested in the possibilities of westward expansion of the United States.
Rational principles of justice would have dictated that U.S. territory encompass settler lands and only a little more.
This would have given to the U.S. only the territory east of the Appalachians and the settlements in Kentucky.
Surely there was no valid reason for giving the Americans the territory north of the Ohio,
Ohio, which was sparsely settled by Frenchmen, militarily controlled by Britain and peopled
by Indians, and the area south of Kentucky was also populated by Indians and now militarily
occupied by Spain.
The other issue with Spain was a corollary to the Western land problem, navigation rights
down the Mississippi.
If the United States had received little or no land in the West, as was its just due,
the Mississippi navigation problem would have been academic, since Spain at New Orleans
controlled at the very least the mouth of the river and there would have been little
American use of the Mississippi.
Even at its most pressing, however, any demand by the U.S. for freedom to navigate the Mississippi
would be highly presumptuous.
Peace terms to trade or navigate is pleasant and beneficial, of course, but any such demand
is aggressive behavior when made of one state by another.
America's first statement of its peace terms came in 1779 in response to a Spanish offer
to mediate the conflict before she entered the war, an offer that failed because of the
and the Intransigence of George III. The urging of France to define peace terms brought the Congress to a spirited five-month debate, March through August 1779, at which Conrad Girard, the French minister to the United States, used his considerable influence to try to induce the Americans to moderate their aggressive demands for the Mississippi as their western boundary and their old colonial right of access to the new
The Newfoundland Fisheries
Actually, the fishing rights spurred the most acrimonious debate, with New England and such radicals as Richard Henry Lee pressing an aggressive demand that war be pursued until the American right to the Newfoundland fisheries be guaranteed.
France, of course, had no intention of fighting to the last for this arrogant claim, and neither did the southern delegates.
Thomas Burke, himself a radical, spoke only common sense when he berated the New Englanders
and announced his aim to prevent any obstruction to peace, but such as were unavoidable.
The split between radical and conservative factions in Congress had, indeed, been precipitated
by the establishment of diplomatic relations with France the year before. Shortly after
After ratification of the Franco-American Treaty in the spring of 1778, the French sent
Conrad Girard as full-fledged minister to the United States, where he arrived in mid-July.
America had been represented in France by a three-man commission.
The commission originally consisted of Benjamin Franklin, Silas Dean, and Arthur Lee, and
There soon developed a bitter split, Connecticut's ultra-conservative and eventually Tory Silas
Deane and the opportunistic hedonist Franklin on the one side and the radical Arthur Lee
on the other.
Lee was particularly bitter at Deane's massive peculations at the public trough of war aid
and war contracts.
In particular, Lee insisted on telling the truth that French aid through Beaumarchais
was intended as a gift whereas Dean and Franklin persisted in treating Beaumarchais as a legitimate
merchant whom the Americans must repay.
Lee cut to the heart of the matter in disclosing Dean's and Franklin's intimate business dealings
with Beaumarchais as part of their pattern of plunder of the American taxpayer.
When Dean was replaced by John Adams in 1778 and recalled to face congressional inquiry
With Minister Girard ostentatiously siding with him, Congress rapidly split into two
factions, the radical Adams Lee Junto, John and Sam Adams an author and Richard Henry
Lee, was pitted against Robert Morris and the conservative.
The major issue was whether Morris and his fellow oligarchs had the natural right to
wax fat at the public trough, with little or no obligation to make an accounting to
to the Public.
Gleefully entering the fray was Thomas Paine, who had been secretary to Congress' Committee
of Foreign Affairs, which in turn had evolved out of the old secret Committee of Correspondence
in April 1777.
Paine blasted the peculations and irregularities of accounts of Dean and, beyond him, of Morris,
He also attacked the system of interlocking public-private finance and of public officials
engaging in private trade that made the financial irregularities possible.
He accurately termed these officials monopolizers and trenchantly added that one monopolizer
confederates with another and defaulter with defaulter, yet still these men will talk of
of Justice, that private vice should thus put on the mask of public good and even imprudence
in guilt, assume the style of patriotism, are paradoxes.
Joining Paine in a press war over the Dean affair were Henry Lawrence, the Lees, and
the Pennsylvania radicals Timothy Matlack, David Rittenhouse, and Charles Wilson Peel,
While Robert and Gouverneur Morris and William Dewar defended Dean, the result of this storm
in Congress during 1778-79 was what all too often happens in such brawls, the decimation
of the leaders of both sides, grave irregularities being found in his accounts, Dean was implicitly
repudiated by Congress and openly defected to the British side.
Mises prudently left Congress and devoted himself solely to his commercial empire.
Payne was forced to resign as secretary of the committee for disclosing state secrets
in his zeal to expose the truth about Dean.
France and Spain declared author Lee persona non grata.
His diplomatic career shattered.
He became a congressman from Virginia and there led in the suspicion of France as an
and the untrustworthy ally. Characteristically, the one man who emerged from the fracas with
laurels was wily old Franklin. When Girard was sent as the French minister to the U.S.,
America had to appoint its own minister to France. With Dean gone, the old opportunist
was the favorite of the French court, and France put severe pressure upon Congress to
to Appoint Him, a wave of laudatory propaganda by France poured into Congress and lavish
loans were pointedly made by the French to the United States through Franklin.
Richard Henry Lee, slashingly and trenchantly, announced his disgust at Franklin as a wicked
old man who labored under the idea of his being a philosopher.
Precisely how wicked, even Lee did not know. Cecil Currie has recently discovered not only
that Franklin was deeply involved in the Morris Dean embezzlements, but also that he served
throughout his wartime stay in Paris as a conscious secret agent of Great Britain, Code
No. 72 in the British Intelligence Archives. During the peace negotiations, he shifted
to a pro-French role probably related to his own speculations in Western lands.
Nevertheless, in mid-September 1778, Congress appointed him Minister de France, but by a
slender majority.
During the crucial 1779 session of Congress, the Adams-Lee radicals led the fight for maximum
aggressiveness in peace demands and opposed Girard's attempts to moderate these demands
on behalf of French and Spanish interests. Finally, on August 14, after much squabbling
among the factions, Congress agreed to the following peace terms as a minimum, independence,
the Mississippi as the western boundary of the new nation, and the thirty-first parallel
as the southern frontier of the American West. It was assumed that Spain would demand East
and West Florida, and the 31st parallel would grant the United States a large chunk of West
Florida, south of the mouth of the Yazoo River. Girard had been able to moderate the fishing
and Mississippi navigation terms, and the American drive to seize Canada and Nova Scotia
to the status of conditional rather than absolute demands.
In return for moderating their aggressive demands, the radicals expected to be able
to name the minister plenipotentiary who would have the power to negotiate a peace based
upon these terms.
The radicals wanted Arthur Lee, but his support was too slight, and they were forced to swing
They showed their strength to John Adams, whom they vastly preferred to his rival, conservative New York oligarch John Jay.
Finally, on September 27, 1779, John Adams, an independent man strongly disliked by the French, was chosen by Congress as its negotiator for peace.
France now launched a quiet but effective campaign to pressure and subborn the American Congress, a campaign led in the United States by the wily new French minister, the Chevalier de la Lucerne.
During early 1781 when the war news was gloomy for the Allies, Vergen quietly prepared to betray America by being willing to settle for a truce based on existing military lines.
He was prepared to use an Austro-Russian offer of mediation in the conflict to put this scheme into effect, and his pressure and quiet bribery weakened Congress's stand.
Much of his influence on Congress was exerted through the well-known General John Sullivan of New Hampshire, who was on his secret payroll.
La Lucerne's pressure and quiet bribery succeeded, by late 1781, in getting Congress to name his friend, the conservative New York oligarch Robert R. Livingston, to the vital new post of Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
Affairs.
After a studied campaign of calumny against John Adams, the French were able to induce
Congress to replace him with a five-man commission to conduct the peace negotiations.
In addition to Adams, the commission would consist of Franklin, John Jay, who had been
negotiating in Spain, Henry Lawrence and Thomas Jefferson.
But Jefferson was not able to leave for Europe in time, and Lawrence was a prisoner in England,
and so this left the conservatives Franklin and Jay as a majority on the commission.
La Lucerne's pressure also succeeded on June 15, 1781, in drastically modifying the American
stance on peace.
Congress rescinded its 1779 peace terms, and only independence remained as the minimum demand
for Making Peace.
Apart from independence, the Commission had absolute discretion to make whatever terms
they wished, with the amazing proviso that no action could be taken without the knowledge
and concurrence of the French, whose advice should be ultimately followed by the Commission.
It seemed that America was binding itself to French dictation, and the composition of
The New Commission, as well as the identity of the new Foreign Secretary, confirmed this
view. The stunned Congressman, James Lovell, wrote to John Adams of these new instructions.
Blush, blush, America!
After the Battle of Yorktown, author Lee tried to get Congress to rescind these instructions,
but it continued to cling heavily to an absolute trust that Vergin would be ever vigilant in
and the pursuit of American interests. Fortunately, the victory at Yorktown made Vergen forget about betraying American independence.
Peace negotiations began at the end of March 1782 as Shelburne sent the Scottish merchant and former Virginian Richard Oswald to France to confer with Franklin.
Franklin secretly urged the sympathetic Oswald to cede Canada to the United States, a prospect France strongly opposed.
But despite promises of immediate British recognition of their independence, the Americans steadfastly refused to betray their French ally by concluding a separate peace.
Furthermore, Admiral Rodney's defeat of de Grasse's French fleet in West Indian waters in mid-April softened French demands and brought French and American goals closer into line.
On July 1, 1782, Lord Rockingham died. His natural successor as Prime Minister was the charismatic Charles James Fox, the new leader of the Whig Party.
But King George, who could not abide the strongly liberal Fox, instead chose Shelburne, and
Fox and the Whigs went into opposition.
Shelburne and his emissary Oswald were now in full charge of peace negotiations.
Fox had urged the Ministry to grant American independence as a preliminary to the body
of negotiations.
By thus recognizing the United States unequivocally, a split might be created in the Franco-American
alliance.
For similar reasons, the Wiley-Vergen tried to delay such an immediate recognition of
American independence, and it was John Jay who realized this while Franklin was being
bemused, to put it kindly, by France.
Both Jay and Franklin, however, quickly caved in on their demand for advanced recognition
of independence before negotiations, a recognition that Shelburne had finally been prepared to
grant by early September.
Shelburne was even willing to accept the American terms for freedom of fishing in Newfoundland.
Had Jay and Franklin held firm, independence would have been gained on the spot, with none
One of the American concessions that were eventually imposed.
John Adams, indeed, was so incensed at the retreat by Jane Franklin on advance recognition
that he thought seriously of resigning from the Peace Commission.
Serious divergences between the Allies also arose over America's western boundary.
Spain made clear to Jay its claim to the area of the southwest, east of the Mississippi,
as well as its opposition to any American pretensions north of the Ohio, which it saw
as more cogently in British or even Indian hands.
France supported Spain's position and, what is more, it privately advised the British that
But it did not agree to America's independent claims to the fisheries or to the lands around
the Mississippi or north of the Ohio.
It was these hints of French opposition that panicked Jay into abandoning the advance independence
clause in order to launch peace negotiations rapidly.
As a result, Jay and Franklin were naively content with Oswald's authorization of September
19 to treat with the commissioners of the thirteen United States and to accept independence
as part of the treaty.
But this was not ironclad recognition of American independence prior to and separate from the
treaty.
Moreover, Britain was further emboldened at the peace table by the relief of the French
and allied siege of Gibraltar.
With Franklin's support, Jay submitted a preliminary draft treaty to the British, which included
Franklin's previous conditions plus freedom of navigation on the Mississippi.
The latter clause was tied to a reciprocal freedom of trade for American shipping and
and Commerce throughout the British Empire.
Furthermore, American boundaries were supposed to include the Toronto Peninsula of Canada,
as well as the southwest down to the 31st parallel.
They had not relinquished claims to Canada in order to push for British acquiescence
to America's attempt to grab the lands in the west.
For its part, Britain felt strengthened by the victory at Gibraltar
and raise the question of compensation of American Tories, as well as payment by the U.S. Government of pre-war private American debts to British creditors.
Britain also let fall the idea of American trade obeying Britain's own Navigation Act.
At the end of October, a veritable flurry of negotiations took place,
Negotiations which Jay, Adams and Franklin, in defiance of their congressional instructions, conducted totally without consulting Vergennes, and indeed against his advice to moderate their presumptuous demands for territory and fishing rights.
The peace treaty between the United States and Great Britain, one highly favorable for the US, was tentatively signed between the American and British negotiators on November 5, 1782.
After some weakening of American fishing rights in Newfoundland, the final treaty was signed on November 30, and Franklin informed Vergenne of this fait accompli.
The Frenchman's reaction was surprisingly mild, and he was placated by Franklin's reassurances
that the French would have to conclude peace before the treaty could take effect.
Probably Vergenne was relieved that America's signing a separate peace served to discourage
Spain from trying to continue the war until she could recapture the now safely British
Gibraltar.
Dealing finances also made France eager for peace, and parallel French peace negotiations
were by now almost finished in any case.
Gibraltar was the final sticking point for the peace treaties with France and Spain.
Shelburne was actually willing to concede Gibraltar, and a deal began to materialize
for exchanging it for French-held Martinique, Guadeloupe and Santa Lucia in the West Indies.
But news of the American Treaty, as well as the tenacious defense of Gibraltar, began to stir up a war fever among the British public, who were especially resistant to yielding Gibraltar.
Finally, the Spanish ambassador to Paris, Pedro Aranda, decidedly unenthusiastic about a strong British presence in the West Indies, accepted a British offer of Menorca and East and West Florida.
In turn, the Spanish sadly relinquished Gibraltar.
All the obstacles to a general peace were now over, and both the Anglo-French and Anglo-Spanish preliminary peace treaties were signed on January 20, 1783.
A general armistice was proclaimed which included the Netherlands, even though a peace treaty with the Dutch had not yet been signed.
In February, Fox formed a coalition with his old enemy, Lord North, who was also in opposition,
and together they pulled down the Shelburne Ministry.
A Fox-North coalition ministry was formed in early April with both men as Secretaries of State,
while the Whig Duke of Portland was the frontman as ineffectual Prime Minister.
This maneuver to bring the Whigs back to power proved to be tactically shrewd, but it was strategically disastrous to Fox and the Whigs.
Fox was never able to explain this unprincipled left-right coalition to his followers, and his radical mass base was split grievously and ultimately crushed as a result.
Fox tried to reopen peace negotiations by insisting on a permanent military alliance between Britain and the U.S., but the Americans countered with their own demands for free trade, the protection of neutral rights and other concessions.
The Peace Treaty was conclusively signed between the United States, France and her allies and Great Britain on September 3, 1783 with no change made from the 1782 Anglo-American draft.
This Treaty of Paris featured the following provisions.
1. U.S. independence was recognized. 2. Hostilities were to cease and all British land and sea forces were to be evacuated with all convenient speed.
3. The United States was granted all the lands north of the Ohio River up to its present northern boundary and the territory southward to 31 degrees south.
4. The Americans were given the right to fish, as they had during the colonial period, off
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, but the clause granting them the liberty to dry and cure the
fish on the coast was ambiguous and proved a source of trouble for many decades.
5. Congress would recommend to the state legislatures to restore all the rights and confiscated
to States of Tories, a clause having no binding effect on the states.
6. No future confiscation or other action would be taken against Tories, and imprisoned
Tories were to be set free immediately. 7. All debts between citizens of either country
were to meet no lawful impediment to repayment. 8. The navigation of the Mississippi would
would be free to both countries, the U.S. and Great Britain, a meaningless clause since
Spain effectively controlled that river.
Congress, knowing full well that the Tory clause could be violated with impunity and
that France was already placated, easily ratified the preliminary treaty on April 15 and unanimously
ratified the final treaty on January 14, 1784, final ratifications being exchanged on May
12.
The United States of America had at last definitely won their Revolutionary War.
They were now a new nation.
On December 14, in accordance with the treaty, the British troops completed their evacuation
of New York, taking with them 7,000 Tories, making a huge total of 100,000 Tories who
had fled America for Europe or Canada. George Washington ceremonially entered New York City
with Governor George Clinton, took leave of his officers at Francis Tavern, and resigned
his commission as Commander-in-Chief before Congress on December 23rd.
England's cavalier cession to the United States of the entire unconquered Western lands was
part of her maneuvers against France and Spain, and was, of course, a gross betrayal of England's
Indian allies. The failure of the United States to abide by the Spirit of the Tory Clause
gave Great Britain the excuse to revoke, in effect, the cession of the Ohio lands and
and to maintain its military garrisons intact.
This appeased and strengthened Britain's Indian friends and preserved Indian control of the
Ohio lands while Spain and its allied Indians threatened to contest the Southwest.
And so the revolutionary United States of America threw off the British yoke and won
and the first successful war of national liberation against Western imperialism.
Many factors entered into the victory, but the most important was the firm support for
the war by the great majority of the American people.
It was that support which harassed, enveloped and finally destroyed the proud British armies
These come to conquer and occupy in the name of traditionally legitimate government.
It was a revolution fueled by fervent belief in libertarian natural rights ideology and
by a cumulative reaction to growing British infringement on those rights, political, constitutional
and economic.
George Washington, the highly-touted father of his country, had a military impact that was negligible by the time of his death.
Washington won only a single victory among his many battles—Trenton-Princeton—and
That was precisely the only battle where Washington deigned to stoop to guerrilla tactics.
The rest of the time, before and after Trenton, Washington was far too much the orthodox military
leader yearning for a Prussian-style state army and a conventional victory in frontal
confrontation.
Hence his string of defeats and disasters in the New York and the Pennsylvania campaigns,
The military victories in the war belonged to others, to Gates, to Morgan, to Greene,
all of whom won by basically guerrilla strategy and tactics, and most of whom were either
disgraced or placed in limbo by the jealous Washington.
Not only did Washington fail to understand the purely military aspects of a people's
of the First Revolutionary War, but he also failed to grasp the importance of the free and inspired individual soldier in such a war, and hence he wrecked morale and brought about mutinies by his Prussian discipline.
The war was actually won despite Washington rather than because of him.
To a large extent, finally, it was the genius whom he broke and discredited, the almost forgotten Charles Lee, who discerned the true nature of a revolutionary war and the way that it had to be won.
The revolution was won because Lee's type of war was able to set aside the kind of war that Washington tried but failed to create.
As Shy writes, intellectual that he was, Lee tried to see the revolution as a consistent whole, with every aspect in rational harmony with every other.
It was a fight by free men for their natural rights.
Neither the fighters nor the cause were suited to the military techniques of despotism, the linear tactics, the rigid discipline, the long enlistments,
Resistance, the strict separation of the army from civic life that marked Frederic's Prussia.
Lee envisioned a popular war of mass resistance.
He sought a war that would use the new light infantry tactics already in vogue among the
military avant-garde in Europe, the same tactics the free men at Lexington and Concord had
instinctively employed.
Much men could not be successfully hammered into goose-stepping automatons and made to
fire by platoons, but properly trained and employed, they could not be defeated.
Nathaniel Green's campaign in the South was to confirm Lee's prophetic insight.
But to Washington, a practical man not given to theorizing, this was all madness.
He never seriously considered resorting to a war of guerrilla bands drawn from the militia.
He would have recoiled with horror from such an idea.