Mackesy P. The War for America, 1775-1783
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in its hour of defeat, to reconcile America without conceding independence, to marshal the nation's resources
against the danger from France. The times indeed required a Chatham, confident, ruthless and domineering. Lord
North knew it well. 'Whoever comes to the assistance of government', he told the King, 'must be the director and
dictator of the leading measures of government . . . Lord North's diffidence of himself is grounded upon seven
years' experience, and will for ever render it fatal to His Majesty to continue him at the Treasury.'1
The appeal was vain. The King was willing to admit Chatham to the existing Ministry; but he feared that if he
formed one of his own it would be to shackle the Crown. Deaf to Lord North's entreaties, he clung to his present
servants. They would survive in office because the Opposition was too deeply divided on the question of American
independence to unite in the House of Commons. In April Chatham's death removed the possibility of his
accession, and the Ministry struggled feebly on into the great war which lay ahead. And at the head of affairs was a
man who 'had become the mere sum of the forces acting upon him'2: Lord North remained at the Treasury, the
distracted leader of a divided Cabinet.
3
A Strategic Re-appraisal
The lack of a leader was apparent on the day after the news of Saratoga. It was clear that even if France did not
enter the war, the assault on the citadels of rebellion had failed, and some new plan was needed. 'I can think and
speak of nothing but America', Germain told Eden. For the time being the catastrophe had destroyed his confidence
in the policy of military reconquest, and he fell back on the idea of a naval war. Troops should be used only to
hold the navy's bases and raid the coastline, under commanders with full powers to treat for peace. But North was
too distracted by the political clamour to initiate a re-appraisal. It was a situation often repeated in the years to
come; and the means used on this occasion to force the problem on the Prime Minister's attention were to become
standard techniques as North's will increasingly broke down. The approaches were two: from below through
underlings, and from above through the King.
Germain was working for a meeting with North and Suffolk. But instead of approaching the Prime Minister
directly, he sent his ideas to Suffolk's Under-Secretary, Eden, whose influence with North was then in the
ascendant. Eden put down on paper some of the questions it was essential to decide, in the hope that North would
focus his mind on them. Should we
1 G 2239.
2 Ritcheson, 251.
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reduce our effort in America to a maritime war? If so, we must decide what bases to keep, how to hold them, and
what ships to employ. Should the Howes be recalled, and the naval command split into three separate blockading
stations? Above all, what were the political implications of such a war? It would end the quest for a decisive
victory and a dictated peace. The struggle would become one of attrition in which weariness might draw both sides
towards a compromise. The ground must be prepared for a new negotiation; and Eden suggested a clean sweep of
existing Acts of Parliament and a new Commission to investigate colonial grievances and devise a settlement. Such
a descent from the proud expectations of 1775 might discredit the Ministry, and particularly the American
Secretary. In the first black days after Saratoga, when Germain had confessed that he began to despair of victory if
the rebels continued united, he had declared in the House his opposition to a federal union, and said that if the
colonies could not be brought back to a state of constitutional obedience, he would prefer to break all political
connection with them. With this in mind, Eden suggested privately to North that the way might be cleared by the
removal of the unbending Secretary to the House of Lords.1
The King was pressing independently for a radical review of strategy. Like Germain he believed that the army
would have to be reduced to the defensive, and he urged North to consult Amherst and others who knew America.
Under this pressure North assembled the Cabinet, and matters began to move. Sandwich was asked by the Cabinet
to produce the naval view, while the King sought a military opinion from Amherst, who was interviewed first by
North, Suffolk and Sandwich, and then by the whole Cabinet. Sandwich and Amherst were found to be in
complete agreement: military reconquest must give place to maritime pressure. Sandwich, indeed, in the light of
French intentions, challenged the fundamental assumption that America was the vital theatre; a doubt which was to
permeate his thought from this time on. But if the colonies were still to be the main point of effort, he agreed with
Germain that we should rely on naval pressure. Hitherto the blockade had failed because Howe's ninety ships had
been absorbed in supporting the army's offensives, enabling the enemy to import and survive. A new directive
should now be sent to Lord Howe to concentrate his resources against the rebels' ports, including (Sandwich added
on Germain's suggestion) support for coastal attacks by the army.
Amherst regarded conquest as impossible without a reinforcement of thirty or forty thousand men; but even a sea-
war would need additional troops. England would need 33,000 men in America and Canada to secure the navy's
bases, and 12,000 more if Philadelphia was retained. Thus, surveying the ruins
1 Add. MSS. 34414, ff. 3948; Parl. Hist., XIX, 530.
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of past strategy, the King, the American Secretary, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Ministry's most trusted
General were united in disavowing the attempt to reconquer America on land. When the attempt was resumed in
1779 it would take a very different form.1
If the blockade was to be made effective more naval bases were needed, for the Halifax yard was too remote to
service squadrons blockading the whole length of the American coastline. The professional members of the Board
of Admiralty were questioned by the Cabinet; and their advice was to separate the blockading fleet into several
squadron stations with their own yards. It was agreed that a Navy Commissioner should be sent to New York to
create a proper dockyard for that station; but about bases for the southern squadrons the Board had little
information, for though Lord Howe had long since been ordered to report on suitable harbours he had not
complied. But for the central station Mulgrave and Palliser suggested Hampton Roads or Norfolk in the
Chesapeake. In this proposal lay one of the germs of Yorktown.2
The new strategy was one of dispersed security. Instead of reinforcing the main army to maintain the offensive, a
reinforcement was hurried off to defend Canada, and another to strengthen Halifax, whose loss would be
irreparable. Only three or four thousand men could be spared for the main theatre.
On 8 March, five days before the rupture with France threw these plans into the melting pot, Germain signed the
orders to Clinton.3 The diversion of troops to Canada and Halifax as a result of Burgoyne's surrender left only
seven regiments and some recruits immediately available to strengthen Clinton. Therefore if he could not bring
Washington to a decisive battle at the outset of the campaign, he was to cease offensive operations inland and
assail the coasts of New England. He should hold Philadelphia if he could spare the force; but if he needed its
garrison for his coastal attacks, he was authorised to withdraw it.
The orders continued with a glance to the future. In the following autumn (by which time it was hoped that new
regiments raised by bounty subscriptions would enable further reinforcements to be sent), an attempt should be
made to recover Georgia and South Carolina. If all the colonies south of
1 G 2092, 2094, 2131, 2170, 2172; Sandwich, I, 312, 327 ff., 3559; Sackville, II, 949; Willcox, JMH, 1947.
2 Willcox's suggestion that the plan to extend the bases southwards was opposed in Admiralty circles is based
on the correspondence with Shelburne of Robert Gregson, a malcontent Navy Board clerk. But it should be
borne in mind that Palliser and Mulgrave, professional members of the Board of Admiralty, were advocates of
the extension.
3 Sackville, II, 949 (fuller version CO 5/95).
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the Susquehanna could be recovered, the northern ones might be left to their own distress, and the operations
confined to a blockade. These suggestions were so pregnant with triumph and disaster that their origins deserve a
closer examination.
It will be remembered that Howe's original plan for 1777 had foreseen a winter conquest of the southern colonies
from Virginia to Georgia.1 The prospect had made a strong appeal to Germain, and with the southerner Knox at his
back he felt sure that Georgia at least could be recovered with ease.2 His hopes were sustained in the late summer
of 1777 by a memorial from the southern Governors and Lieutenant-Governors in England, based on information
from returning officials and refugees, which set forth the practicability and importance of recovering the southern
colonies that winter. On 3 September, before the shadow of the coming disaster at Saratoga fell across the future,
he communicated the Governors' memorial to General Howe, with a reminder that the conquest of the south in the
course of the winter formed part of his eventual plans. If Howe would carry any part of his army to the south this
winter, he told Knox privately, 'I should have little doubt of their success.'3
Before Howe took up his reluctant pen to reply, the disappointments of his Pennsylvania campaign and the disaster
to Burgoyne had unrolled. His answer in January 1777 damned the plan out of hand. No force could be spared for
the south; he intended to concentrate against the main army of the enemy; and past experience had proved that
nothing more could be expected from the mass of the population than an equivocal neutrality, so that the army
could not rely on the loyalists to hold its gains.4 This letter has been used to deride the whole southern concept.
Yet it specifically referred to 'this winter', and though Howe was unable to forecast a date when the plan could be
attempted, he did not condemn it for ever. Moreover, the letter was questionable in its sentiments and irrelevant to
the new conditions which were emerging. In the first place, as a recent writer on the loyalists has said, Howe had
never shaken off his early experience of their weakness in New England and disorganisation in the Middle
Colonies. Indeed Howe was himself to own, when it pleased him to regret the evacuation of Philadelphia, that his
firm possession of the city had encouraged the numerous loyalists of the Middle Colonies to arm and assist him.5
Two circumstances had altered the outlook since Howe had written. One
1 Above, p. 110.
2 CL, Germain, 2 April 1777 to Mr Stuart.
3 CO 5/95, f. 299; CL, Knox, 13 Sept. 1777.
4 CO 5/95, f. 64.
5 Nelson, 139; Howe's Narrative, 32.
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was that the army was now to disengage in the northern interior if it could not bring Washington to an early and
decisive battle; the other, a revulsion in England against the northern colonies and a feeling that they were not
worth the effort of recovering. This had long since been argued by Knox, and it may have been now that he wrote
two memoranda which assailed the past strategy of the war. He asserted that in attacking the rebels where they
were strongest, England had begun at the wrong end. Instead of pressing south from Pennsylvania against Virginia,
the army should begin its assault by taking Georgia, when South and North Carolina would fall in succession; and
Virginia, with the navy on the coast, the Indians on their backs, and the main army on their north, would then be
seriously pressed.1
Here lies the germ of the future campaigns in the south. A supporting argument, equally persuasive and perhaps
more influential, was being pressed on the Cabinet by that authority on commercial questions, Charles Jenkinson of
the Treasury. At some time after Saratoga he discussed the American situation with North or Germain, and urged
that if England was to contract her operations in America the wisest course would be to give up New England
altogether and make the barrier of the Empire on the Hudson. He amplified these views on paper. His military
argument was that there were no important militia forces south of Pennsylvania; and that the main militia forces of
the rebellion belonged to New England, which could neither afford distant operations nor intervene to the
southward if the British army fortified and held a blocking line on the Hudson. But Jenkinson's commercial
arguments were more unusual: revolutionary indeed from the pen of a Minister. He reasoned that England had no
need to control New England's trade. Of all the produce of the rebel colonies only the tobacco of the south was
worth monopolising by restrictive trade laws; and of England's exports to America only linen and some silks would
suffer if every Act of Trade were repealed. New England would always buy British woollen goods, hardware and
India goods because we sold them cheapest: indeed, if the swollen import figures of Canada and Nova Scotia meant
anything, the New Englanders were buying them by stealth at that very moment. Most of their other British imports
were for re-export to the Spanish Main, and were finding their way there through other channels. New England's
own exported products mostly went to foreign markets; and the enumerated articles, potash and naval stores, could
be got elsewhere except for the great masts of New Hampshire. New England, in a word, could be cast out of the
Empire without damage to Britain's wealth or security. 'If I should happen to be right, how much mistaken and
deluded have been the people of this country for more than a century past. I bow
1 CL, Knox, Vol. 9, Nos. 212.
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with reverence to the Act of Navigation, but I pay very little respect to the Acts of Trade.'1
The view that the British effort should be concentrated against the south was a plausible one after Saratoga. The
southern colonies were in many ways the soft underbelly of the rebellion. It was not only that there were loyalists
in the back country. Though the population was expanding rapidly, it was sparser than in the north, and lived in
fear of a huge slave population which was suspected of Tory sympathies. There were three-quarters of a million
whites spread from Maryland to Georgia, and nearly half as many negroes. These southern colonies, with their thin
populations, their slave problem, and their dependence on exporting their crops, might well prove easier to subdue
and more profitable to hold than the populous and stubborn New England.2
The political aspect of the new plan was tackled as Eden had suggested. Even the King recognised that the political
objects of the war had to be lowered: a sea war could do no more than force the Americans to 'come into what
Britain may decently consent to'; a vague formula, but humble compared with the proud aims of 1775. Before the
Christmas recess North had promised the House that he would introduce new peace proposals; and in the New
Year he closeted himself with Eden and the law officers to draft the bills. For some weeks their contents remained
a mystery even to the Cabinet; but early in February they were passed by a silent and gloomy House. England was
to renounce the right to tax America except for the regulation of trade; and new Commissioners were appointed
with full powers to treat for any terms short of independence.3
On the new Commission was Eden himself. Eager to be dissociated from the foundering Ministry, he had prepared
a rewarding post at a safe distance. The nominal leader of the mission was his young friend the Earl of Carlisle,
needy son-in-law of Lord Gower, trailing a seedy crew of gamblers and place-hunters in his wake: 'very fit', said
Horace Walpole, 'to make a treaty that will not be made'.
4
The Breach with France
Walpole's comment reached the heart of the matter. For the centre of gravity was no longer in Philadelphia, but in
Paris. If France entered the war, the Americans were unlikely to consider any terms short of independence. This
was well recognised; and as soon as the news of Burgoyne's
1 Add. MSS. 38210, ff. 18791.
2 For the southern population, see Alden, The South . . ., 710.
3 For the origins of the Carlisle Mission, see Ritcheson, 258ff.
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capitulation reached London, North and Eden had sent off an unofficial emissary of American birth to talk with
Franklin and his fellow Commissioners in Paris. But so secret was the mission, and so devious the course North
was steering through the ministerial shoals, that Germain knew nothing of it, and independently allowed an
emissary of his own to contact Franklin.
Lord North's instrument was the intelligence agent Paul Wentworth. His purpose, like that of Germain's agent
William Pulteney, was to head the Americans off from a French alliance. But the effect of his mission was the
opposite. The astute Franklin played him off against the French. When Wentworth reached Paris Louis XVI had
already authorised treaty negotiations with the American Commissioners; and his arrival merely frightened
Vergennes into speeding up the discussions. Without even waiting to refer to Madrid, he promised recognition of
America's independence and a treaty of alliance. It was a critical decision for France, for about that time war broke
out between Austria and Prussia, and presented her with a choice between Europe and the oceans. On 6 February
1778 treaties of Commerce and Alliance were signed with the Americans. Louis XVI resigned his opportunity to
exploit the troubles of Germany, and France went forward into a maritime and colonial struggle: to triumph,
bankruptcy and revolution.
When the bills for the new Peace Commission were passed by the House of Commons, the news of the French
treaties was already speeding across the Atlantic to close the doors on compromise. Of this the Cabinet was well
informed. By the end of January the Ambassador in Paris had convinced the Ministry that France's pacific
declaration was a mask for treachery.1 And from Bancroft, Secretary to the American Commissioners and British
spy, Eden's office received every detail of the treaties' contents.
At the beginning of March a French squadron in Quiberon Bay was known to be preparing to escort an American
convoy into the Atlantic. No ink was wasted on remonstrance, for the French had weighed the consequences, and
no British arguments were likely to deflect them.2 Instead, orders went out on 10 March to naval Commanders-in-
Chief to seize all vessels trading with the rebels, regardless of whether they were escorted by a foreign Power. A
clash at sea now seemed inevitable; but the rupture of relations came more formally. On 13 March the French
Ambassador informed Lord Weymouth of his government's Treaty of Commerce with the United States. Nothing
was said of the Treaty of Alliance, but the commercial treaty in itself meant recognition of America's
independence. The same night Lord Stormont was recalled from Paris.
1 SP 78/306, Stormont's of 25 Jan. and Weymouth's of 30 Jan.
2 SP 78/306, 6 March, Weymouth to Stormont.
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This was not war. Many weeks were to pass before fighting began. Every shot would reverberate through the close
network of European alliances; and while England still hoped that the Carlisle Mission might persuade Congress
not to ratify the treaties, France was anxious not to forego her defensive alliances by appearing the aggressor. The
French Foreign Office drew up a remarkable study which showed that there were almost no grounds on which
France could with prudence justify a declaration of war. Anglo-American ideas of the rights of man were not
generally received in the political society of Europe; and it would not be wise to appeal to these, putting in the
mouth of a French king assertions of natural liberty, popular sovereignty, and inalienable rights straight out of
Rousseau's Social Contract. Nor could France set herself up as an arbitrator between England and her colonies,
after evading her duty as a guarantor of the Peace of Westphalia and allowing the annexation of Bavaria. Nor was
it wise for one colonial power to lecture another on constitutional principles. The author's recommendation was to
avoid all discussion of the American treaties, which were indefensible, and to concentrate on France's own
grievances against England. These were slight, but noise and hyperbole could be used to swamp England's
weightier complaints. The only reply to protests against the treaties must be the cannon. Restrained by these
considerations, France like England waited with matches lighted for the smoke of the first shot to break from a
warship's battery.1
1 Harvard, Sparks MSS., LXXV (18 March, Favier to Vergennes).
11
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Chapter VIII
The Naval Mobilisation
1
Sandwich and the Admiralty
This was the moment of truth for Lord Sandwich. For seven years he had been at the head of the navy; and now
his work was to face the test of major operations. In no earlier war had France and England committed their fates
so completely to the seas. France had chosen to forego her opportunities on the continent, and England had no
bridgehead or allies in Europe to enable her to harass the enemy by land. Both powers could use their military
forces only to the extent which sea power allowed. Everything depended on the control of maritime
communications.
Something has already been said about Lord Sandwich's place in the political scene, and his share of responsibility
for the divisions in the navy.1 He was an unpopular figure in many quarters. The rakes had not forgiven 'Jemmy
Twitcher's' prosecution of his friend Wilkes; and the respectable abhorred the looseness of his life. Yet there was
much to be said for this tall, shambling, vigorous man. If his London house was embellished by Martha Ray the
actress and her two bastards, his life had been clouded by the madness of his wife. He had great social charm, and
the atmosphere of his home was relaxed, pleasant and musical. When the French war approached he was in his
sixtieth year, with a long and varied experience behind him: Fellow of the Royal Society, soldier, plenipotentiary at
the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. He had served on the Board of Admiralty in the War of the Austrian Succession, and
then as First Lord till 1751; and had returned to the Cabinet for two years in 1763 as First Lord and then Secretary
of State.
A very hostile account of his career2 admits that Sandwich was esteemed and loved by his subordinates at the
Admiralty; and Philip Stephens, who served as Secretary to the Admiralty for thirty years and remained in office
when Sandwich retired, took much trouble to draw up the case for his defence. A legend persists that he was a
slothful Minister; but contemporaries as well as his own voluminous correspondence bear witness to his industry.
His enemy Lord Howe owned in 1779 that 'to give him his due, he is seldom backward . . . in answering letters'.3
1 Introduction, pp. 78, 1012.
2 Sir Charles Laughton in DNB.
3 Huntington Library, HO II (29 June 1779, Howe to Capt. Curtis). See also Wraxall Memoirs, II, 180; Butler,
Reminiscences, 71.
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The most persistent critic of Sandwich's office habits was Sir Charles Middleton, who succeeded Sir Maurice
Suckling as Comptroller in 1778. This great administrator was commanding a fifty-gun ship on the stocks when
Suckling's death in July 1778 called him from a seaman's life to the administrative career which was to bring him
to the head of the Admiralty in the year of Trafalgar. His predecessor Suckling had served the country well by
bringing his nephew Horatio Nelson into the navy. But his three years at the Navy Board had been marred by
failing health; and according to Middleton he had been unable to get business through the Board in the face of
some contentious and domineering colleagues. Middleton was a more formidable chairman. Thorough, capable of
sustained effort, and patient in the pursuit of long-term objectives, he applied himself to the task of improving the
navy's administration. His first task was to end the contention at the Navy Board. By bringing everything to the
vote at once, he silenced the endless debate which clogged its business. He threw himself whole-heartedly into the
work of his office; labours which increased continuously as the war went on. 'The Comptroller', wrote an Official
of the Navy Board, 'is the most indefatigable and able of any in my time. The load of business he gets through at
the Board, at the Treasury, at the Admiralty and his own house, is astonishing, and what I am confident no other
man will be able to execute.'1
But his own labours alone could not make administration flow. If we are to believe him, there existed above his
own Board a greater clog to efficiency in the Admiralty itself. There action was held up because letters lay
unanswered. Ships ready in harbour awaited the Admiralty's orders for stores and victuals, or for the appointment
of boatswains and carpenters to receive them. Middleton contended that there were two causes: lack of supervision
by the First Lord, and lack of professional knowledge on the Board. Too much was left to the Secretary, who could
not take decisions or remove difficulties without time-wasting reference to the Board. The management of 400
warships required unremitting application, and Middleton begged the First Lord to read the correspondence from
the Navy Board himself, and take the necessary action. This, rather than the juggling of appointments, would save
the Ministry: 'measures are more likely to support your Lordship's administration than men'.2
The portrait of Middleton which emerges from his letters shows a gentleman of independent fortune who had
occupied himself with farming before the approach of war brought him back to active service. He said that he had
no interest in the emoluments of his office; his interest was in its duties.
1 Barham, II, 209; CL, Shelburne, Vol. 151, No 87.
2 Sandwich, III, 181; IV, 385; Barham, II, 41.
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