PEACE | Sept. 3–Treaty with Brits; GW Goes Home

George Washington thought he was done.
When Yorktown got the Brits on the run.
But wise folk flew out to his residence,
And begged him to be first of our Presidents.
(Clerihew by JT Marlin.)

This day in 1783 was signed the second Treaty of Paris, between Britain and the newly independent American colonies, supposedly ending the Revolutionary War. The text is here.

It was 20 years after the first Treaty of Paris, signed between the British and the French, which wound up the French and Indian Wars and made the independence of the colonies possible.

Following the signing of the Treaty of Paris by representatives of the American colonies, General Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army and like Cincinnati's, retired to his home–Mount Vernon, Va.

Washington's return to civilian life was significant. It said to history -- "This was not just a war, it was a revolution." 

The Continental Congress had given him dictatorial powers. Some wanted Washington to become king. 

But he did not want this. He wanted a Republic - and land in the western territories for his veteran officers (as well as honoring of existing titles of property-owners in the region). 

Washington's farewells to the nation and to his officers were short-lived. Five years later he was elected as the first President of the United States... and the Brits came back until they were expelled a second time.

STARS AND STRIPES | The Flag of the Sons of Liberty

One of the version of the flags of the Sons of Liberty.
This could be the primary origin of the stripes in
 the Stars and Stripes.

J R "States" Manship recently left a comment on my post "Washington's Coat of Arms and the Stars and Stripes". He asked me several good questions. I am working through them.

His first question: "What role do you see in the Sons of Liberty flag from the Massachusetts colony, that was the flag with only red and white stripes?"

Short Answer: The Sons of Liberty flag may well have provided the model for the red-striped background for the Stars and Stripes. The flag was known to members all the way south to Georgia. It was easily made by sewing white strips onto a red ensign, which was widely available for British vessels, or even using the East India Company flag, which was red-and-white striped.

The Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty was an underground organization created in response to British tax and other hostile actions against the colonies. After defeating France in the French and Indian War, when George Grenville as Prime Minister, Parliament passed the Stamp Act of 1765. It required  certain printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London with an embossed revenue stamp - notably legal documents, newspapers and magazines, and playing cards. The tax had to be paid in valid British currency. who should be paid by London. The Stamp Act was very unpopular among colonists and the Stamp Act Congress in New York City was the first common response among the American colonies to a British law:

• The advertised purpose of the tax was to help pay for 10,000 British troops stationed in North America. The colonial protesters said there was no need for the soldiers, that with the French gone, the colonies had no foreign enemies.
• Colonists needed protection from hostile Indian tribes - but this had always been a local matter.
• Colonial leaders said that the tax was a way to make the colonies pay for semi-retired British officers and unneeded troops.
• Colonists said their rights as Englishmen were violated. They should not be subject to "taxation without representation" in Parliament. They argued that only the colonial legislatures could impose taxes. (Meanwhile, colonial assemblies were voting to protest the taxes.)

The Sons of Liberty organization was created to resist the Stamp Act. The coalition extended from New England down to Maryland, with members all the way to Georgia. Protests and demonstrations initiated by the Sons of Liberty often turned violent. Stamp tax sellers were tarred and feathered, and resigned their commissions. The tax was never collected, as British vendors to the colonies feared for their business. Grenville was relieved of his office in 1765 and the Marquess of Rockingham was made Prime Minister. In 1766 the Stamp Act was repealed but Parliament affirmed its power to impose laws the colonies in the Declaratory Act, which also met with outrage. The next Prime Minister was Pitt the Elder, who was a hero to the colonies because he championed them in the French and Indian War. However, he too had a short time in office (1766-68) and it was left to Lord North to try to generate money from the colonies.

The British Parliament under Lord North passed some excise taxes on tea and other taxes. It did more, something not properly acknowledged in many history texts. The Crown, with the support of Parliament, claimed property rights to all territories to the west of the colonies - much of which was claimed by the colony of Virginia.

The Boston Tea Party.  The Sons of Liberty are remembered mainly for hosting the Boston Tea Party in 1773 in reaction to the Tea Act and then the Intolerable Acts. A unifying name helped to promote inter-Colonial efforts against Parliament and the Crown.

By November 1765, a committee was set up in New York and in December an alliance was formed between groups in New York and Connecticut. By March, Providence had initiated connections with New York, New Hampshire, and Newport, Rhode Island; chapters were started in New Jersey, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia; and a local group in North Carolina was attracting interest in South Carolina and Georgia.

The Sons of Liberty would hold meetings to decide which candidates for office to support. British authorities attempted to denigrate the Sons of Liberty by referring to them as the "Sons of Violence" or the "Sons of Iniquity." The inter-colony communication made possible a decisive boycott following the Townshend Act in 1768.

The property of the gentry, customs officers and other British authorities often fell victim to mobs. In New York City the Sons of Liberty would put up liberty poles and British soldiers would tear them down. In January 1770, in the Battle of Golden Hill, many people were injured and at least one killed. Violent outbreaks over the pole raged intermittently from 1766 until the Patriots gained control of New York City government in April 1775. In Boston, another example of the violence they committed could be found in their treatment of a local stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver. Even after he resigned, they almost destroyed the house of his close associate, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

In December 1773, the Sons of Liberty formally stated their opposition to the Tea Act and took direct action to enforce their opposition to the Tea Act at the Boston Tea Party. Members of the group, wearing disguises meant to evoke the appearance of members of Indian tribes, poured several tons of tea into the Boston Harbor.

The Rebellious Flag

In August 1765, nine citizens of Boston protested the passing of the Stamp Act. They adopted the "rebellious stripes flag" with nine uneven vertical stripes (five red and four white), signifying the “Loyal Nine”, which came to mean the nine colonies that met at the Stamp Act Congress of 1765. Initially the preponderance of members were in Massachusetts, then New York. They then got members from five other colonies (see below).

Massachusetts.  John Adams, lawyer. Samuel Adams, political writer, tax collector/fire warden, Boston. John Hancock, merchant/smuggler/fire warden, Boston.  James Otis, lawyer. Joseph Warren, doctor/soldier, Boston. Thomas Young, doctor, Boston.  Paul Revere, silversmith/fire warden, Boston. James Swan, American patriot and financier, Boston. John Gill, Boston Gazette.   New York - John Lamb, trader, NYC, Alexander McDougall, captain of privateers, NYC.  Isaac Sears – captain of privateers, NYC.  Haym Solomon, financial broker, NYC and Philadelphia. Marinus Willett, cabinetmaker/soldier, New York.  John Holt, colonial publisher for New York Gazette and Weekly Post-Boy (1762–1766) and New York Journal or General Advertiser (1766–1782) and also in Va. and Conn. Pennsylvania - Benjamin Rush, physician, Philadelphia. Charles Thomson, tutor/secretary, Philadelphia.  Connecticut - Benedict Arnold,  businessman, later General in the Continental Army and then the British Army, Norwich. Oliver Wolcott, lawyer. Maryland -  Charles Willson Peale - Portrait painter and saddle maker, Annapolis.  Virginia - Patrick Henry, lawyer/fire warden. South Carolina - Christopher Gadsden, merchant, Charleston.

As the other four colonies joined in, the nine stripes became 13. In 1767, the Sons of Liberty adopted the 13-stripe flag and started recruiting change agents in taverns, the docks and the marketplaces.

It would take 11 more years before the American colonies were sufficiently united against the Mother Country to take the Union Jack off their flag and replace it with the white stars on a blue background.

FRENCH & INDIAN WAR | A Great Read

Borneman's "The French and Indian
War" places it in the context of the
struggles for power in Europe.

January 4, 2013–The past two weeks I have been enjoying the Florida sun and found a book to read when the sun went down that I recommend highly to anyone interested in the origins of the British Empire and the United States of America.

Walter Borneman's 2006 book, published by HarperCollins, shows above all how the British managed to drive the French out of North America – and along with them, eventually, the Spanish and the Native Americans whom they called Indians.

So long as the French were a threat, the American colonies were dependent on the British military to defend them. Ironically, by driving out the French, the British Government under the prime ministership of Pitt the Elder was making possible the independence of their colonies.

Pitt himself would not have minded this outcome of his efforts. He was a fierce devotee of the colonies and vigorously opposed the Stamp Act in 1766 ("The Americans are the sons, not the bastards of England.), argued for removing British troops from Boston and deplored the attitude toward the colonies of Lord North. (Both Pitt and North attended Trinity College, Oxford but they are judged very differently by history.) Although Pitt never set foot in America, he wished not long before his death that he were ten years younger so that he could

spend the remainder of my days in America, which has already given the most brilliant proofs of its independent spirit. (Borneman, p. 305, citing J. C. Long's 1940 book on Pitt.)

Borneman, who lives in Colorado, has previously written about the War of 1812. He shows that George II was wrapped up in keeping his "prized possession," Hanover. The king sent his "most treasured son", the duke of Cumberland, to defend Hanover, but the duke was surrounded by the French at Hastenbeck in Germany, and was forced to surrender Hanover to the French. Cumberland escaped with the help of Colonel Jeffrey Amherst, and on his return to Britain "resigned his military offices in disgrace".

Borneman provides highly readable summaries of the different battles in North American, showing how the outcome of battles hinged on the strategic sense of commanders, and the importance of small numbers of savvy soldiers. He portrays Pontiac as an able military commander but questions how important he was as a leader of the Iroquois or other tribes. At numerous points he suggests that the early allegiance of different tribes to the British was based on lavish gifts, and to the French was based on the comfortable laissez-faire relationship that the French had with their Indian allies.

What the British had going for them is that they brought their women with them and built families. They increased and multiplied. The French came as traders and went home. The imbalance of population meant that the British were favored in the contest between British and French.

In the end, the French and Indian wars - what the Europeans called the Seven Years War - left Europe pretty much the way it started. But it made Britain lord of North America, and along the way established the British Navy as preeminent, and created bases for the British - for example, in India - that became the cornerstones of the British Empire. Pitt, and not George II, understood what was going to be important in the decades ahead.

The problem for the British after the dust settled is that the wars were costly and had to paid for and, many thought, why not make the colonies pay for their own defense?  The Stamp Act imposed duties on imported goods. To which Benjamin Franklin suggested that the new fashion would be "to wear their old clothes over again." Pitt in 1766 succeeded in having it repealed. The Quartering Act billeted British soldiers on the homes of American colonists and the New York legislature voted to nullify it. The British were "aghast".

George III was "contemptuous" of the colonials. Pitt's chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townsend, seeing Pitt ailing, moved ahead to do the king's bidding and imposed new taxes on imports into the colonies of glass, lead, paints, paper and... tea.

The last straw were the "Intolerable Acts", of which the Quebec Act of 1774 appears to Borneman as the most significant. It granted territory north of the Ohio river to the British colony at Quebec. George Washington had claimed these lands for Virginia in 1753 and in 1763 they were nominally marked as an Indian reserve, while several states had their eye on them for purposes of westward expansion.  The Acts also enacted reprisals for the dumping of tea in Boston Harbor.

All this came to a head on April 18, in 1775, when two lanterns were hung in the steeple of Boston's old North Church and their beams sent messengers riding toward Lexington and Concord.

This is a fascinating book and its 400 pages read like a thriller.