Sergeant Lamb's America Page 8

  It has always been a matter of perplexity to me, how far my attitude towards Kate Harlowe sprang from noble causes, and how far there was an admixture of irony because of my scorn for her husband. It would, I think, be just to say that the two motives, namely, that of pleasing and comforting her to the best of my ability, and that of showing her husband by contrastive generosity how shabbily I thought of him, were reconciled and intertwined. In any event, I never (let me swear) planned to coax away her affections from the man she had married, however obnoxious he might be to me, and from a comrade-in-arms too, however lacking in soldierly honour. Nevertheless, the effect of my visit was that her gratitude to me became confused in her heart with yet warmer feelings; and it was as much as I could do to play the virtuous Joseph and, with a cool word or two, disengage myself from her impetuous embrace.

  The old passion now stirred again in me, and Kate was soon aware of it. Had not Gentleman Harlowe been released from confinement two days later I do not know to what follies my inclination might have led me. But the very fact of his now being put under my immediate command proved a sufficient check to my feelings; he was in my power, as any soldier is in the power of a corporal who cares to vent his spite, and I knew that the greatest punishment which I could inflict was to heap coals of fire upon his head, in requital of his former insults and injuries. This I did by treating him no worse than his fellow soldiers, and even a little better, as one who had received training as a non-commissioned officer.

  All was not well with me, by any means. Kate Harlowe was seldom out of my thoughts, and whenever I met her in the streets, walking either alone or in her husband’s company, the sight of her lovely face and figure was like a stab to me. Because of this preoccupation, I soon slipped back again into my former habits of drinking, gambling, and idleness. Indeed, I so far forfeited the confidence of my officers that I was warned by Major Bolton himself on one occasion that unless I soon sloughed off my negligence I would suffer the same degradation as Richard Harlowe.

  In January 1776, when the American War had already been in progress for some months (at a cost so far to us of three million pounds sterling and two or three thousand casualities from wounds or sickness, whereas only one hundred and fifty of the enemy had fallen) I was seized with severe sickness at the Dublin Barracks. I was sent into the general military hospital in James Street (at present used as a barracks) and disabled to march with the Regiment on its receiving the route to the Cove of Cork, where it was to embark for North America. I was the only soldier of The Ninth obliged to stay behind for sickness, and the loneliness of my position, as well as regret for the intemperance which had caused my sickness, made me anxious for a rapid recovery. Early in March I thought myself enough recovered to leave the hospital. I immediately waited on Sir William Montgomery, our Army agent, in Mary Street. Here I was informed that The Ninth was supposed to be already on its voyage, and recommended to join the additional company belonging to us, employed in England on the recruiting service.

  My parents and sisters were urgent with me to go with the recruiting parties, in order to detain me from the dangers of foreign service. I had indeed a great curiosity, on the one hand, to visit England, a single county of which seemed of more interest to me than the whole of North America; but on the other hand I considered that remaining aloof from the scene of warfare was not consistent with the manhood of a soldier. I resolved to repair to the Cove of Cork and sail, if possible, with the Regiment; or, if not, then in some later ship bound for the same destination, which was Quebec in Canada. Mrs Harlowe was among the wives who had elected to follow The Ninth to America, and it was perhaps the thought of standing well in her esteem that swung the balance of my judgment in making my choice.

  So to Cork I went and found the Regiment still there, in spite of a delay I had undergone by the desertion of a recruit from Downpatrick, who had been entrusted to my charge and to whom I had advanced a fortnight’s pay, knowing that I should be refunded whatever I thus gave him. Incensed and anxious that he should have no cause to plume himself upon ‘running the old soldier’ so much to my expense, I put up placards in the most public parts of the city, advertising the deserter in minute detail. I had the satisfaction to learn of his arrest, three days later, on the Drogheda Road. This man, by name Casey, was a Papist. Owing to the difficulty of finding recruits to bring our regiments up to full establishment, the rule against the enlistment of Papists had recently been waived. But few enough came forward: for that year and the next were among the most prosperous years for farming that Ireland has ever experienced, and the peasants had an inveterate dread of fire-arms, besides.

  My valuable friend, Major Bolton, expressed himself pleased at my joining the Regiment, of which he then again had the command (for Lord Ligonier held too exalted a rank to lead us in person), and characterized me as a volunteer, since I might well have gone to England to beat up recruits. He therefore at once promoted me to the acting rank of sergeant in his own company, and used me occasionally in the capacity of confidential clerk.

  On the 26th of April in the same year we embarked in a well-appointed expedition consisting of ourselves, the Twentieth, Twenty-fourth, Thirty-fourth, Fifty-third, and Sixty-second Regiments: with which bare statement I must close this account of my peace-time service in Ireland. Next, I will keep my promise and give some account of the origins of the American War then already in progress; and relate what had so far occurred in it. I will also make it plain why we were being embarked for Canada, which was not in revolt, rather than for the embattled American colonies.

  It would not be amiss to mention here that the system of transports is a very bad one; the captains think only of their owners and of themselves, and take whatever liberties they dare with the troops and cargo entrusted to their bottoms. If the Government had sent reinforcements in royal vessels, which it did not, even where the need was most urgent, they would have arrived both more speedily and in better condition, and the course of the war would have changed materially. At least a thousand Highland volunteers sent over later in the war in slow-sailing, unarmed, unescorted transports never reached their destination, being ingloriously captured on the high seas by American privateers. Why did this system continue, to the great hurt of the nation? I fear that the reason preponderating was that certain influential men in the Government drew a commission of three per centum on the hire of these ships, and loved their wives and families too well to relinquish this perquisite.

  Chapter VI

  I WILL BEGIN my short historical survey of the origins of the American War with a single short sentiment that was freely and continually expressed by all classes and conditions of our people both civil and military, and on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, throughout the conflict: that it was ‘a damned business, a very damned ugly business’. Yet I must in honesty add that, though the losses in lives and treasure that it entailed were in every way to be heartily regretted, yet the separation between the Crown and the Colonies must in the nature of things have come about at some time or other, and perhaps it was as well that it came when it did.

  America, in her relation to Great Britain, was frequently presented at this time as a froward child who defied an indulgent parent. This figure was, however, in no sense apt: for America as a single consentient nation did not yet exist, and the diverse American provinces had each in turn finished with tutelage and put on the manly gown.

  Now, there is nothing so absurd and so uncomfortable as when grown sons with families of their own are obliged from filial duty to stay under a father’s roof, to keep fixed hours, conform to quaint usages, and draw pocket-money instead of wages for whatever labour they perform on his estate. It galls their pride and retards their ambition. The old patriarch may tell them: ‘My sons, surely you are tolerably well off here? You can want for nothing in food, drink, clothing, or other comforts. I allow you each a wing of my mansion to yourself. I pay the tithes and the taxes on your behalf. There is sport enough in my coverts, and the la
bour that I require of you is light. The authority of my name is sufficient to protect you against all insult and danger. Where else in the world would you and your families find yourselves so well off as here, in this spacious and well-provided mansion? Are you so ungrateful then? Or what more can you want of me that I do not do? What restraint have I ever set upon you? I even – an unheard-of thing – have excused your attendance at family prayers. No, no! Be careful that you do not try my patience, my boys. And see, now it is past ten o’clock. Drink up your quart pots, kiss your mother, and off to bed you go with your wives, and pray let us have no more arguments.’

  The sons have no answer to make, unless a low muttering that ‘every grown man has the right to live where and how he pleases, in independence.’ If they are men of spirit as their father is, sure as fate it will come to a quarrel in the end. This quarrel will blow out of some trifling domestic occurrence and the sons will perhaps have a poor enough case to present to the world. But they will push it to extremes, well knowing that the father must grow exasperated and stand on his authority when he finds that they are deaf to reason. For they fear that, unless they force the issue, they will become confirmed in their dull habit of dependence upon him, and forfeit all dignity of manhood. Their trouble is that a profound admiration for their father makes rebellion alike more difficult and more painful.

  It is easy to be wise after the event. For my part I think that where quarrels are due they had best come soon. ‘Bear and forbear’ is an impossible counsel of domestic perfection. For a certain sort of son, complete independence is the only cure of his moods. Left to himself he will come, in time, to be a polished, respectable citizen of the world, and on civil terms with his father again.

  So we come to the quarrel between the Crown and the American colonies. It may be objected that I cannot but be partial in judging the rights and wrongs of this case, seeing that seven of the middle years of my life were spent in America as a loyal soldier of King George after he had quarrelled with his revolted subjects. But I had cause to feel both respect and affection for the better people of America during those seven years, and would not therefore be willingly guilty of making any misrepresentation or suppression of fact that would aggravate an already bitter case. I may observe that I have in my time read a great number of American newspapers and pamphlets – printed in the war years on blue, yellow, brown, and black paper for lack of white – and listened to a large number of political conversations during the year and a half of captivity that I spent among them, and consulted numerous books since published in the United States. Especially I shall beware of sneers and airs of affected superiority as a Briton, in telling my tale. But where things were ill done on the American side I shall be no more ready to conceal them, from false delicacy, than if they had been done on ours.

  To begin, then: the people of the colonies planted in North America enjoyed almost every privilege and liberty enjoyed by His Majesty’s subjects at home, and were indeed by the various Royal Charters permitted to govern themselves by whatever laws, however odd, that it might please their provincial assemblies to frame – and many of them were mighty odd to our British way of thinking – so long as they did not conclude treaties with a foreign power. The allegiance that the colonists, or all but those of Massachusetts, gave the Crown for two centuries was spontaneous and unquestioning; and the whole American people, you may say roundly, thought it no more than justice that in return for the armed protection afforded their country by the British Army and Fleet, and for the monopoly of tobacco-manufacture, certain trade advantages should be required from them. The English, for example, prohibited the colonists, as they prohibited the Irish, to manufacture various goods in competition with themselves, or to purchase directly from foreign nations certain articles of commerce: England was to remain the sole provider and carrier as she had been at the first.

  If any American thought that this bargain was unjust, he could find satisfaction in the thought that on his side it was being persistently evaded. England’s claim to engross American trade had not been enforced for a century; there was smuggling done on a vast scale along the whole of the American sea-board. Nor could it be reckoned a hardship that the competition of American manufacturers with the English should be restricted. There were a few small manufactories in the villages of New England that kept hands busy in the long winter months and filled the pedlar’s pack; but these were not provided against by the Acts of Trade. Nor were great manufactures for export in the English style ever seriously considered in America. In the first place, the success of such an enterprise must depend on there being a great number of poor people to do the work for small wages and long hours; but in those fortunate colonies there were (and still are) no industrious but unfortunate poor. Where land is cheap and rich, every man of energy who will work with his own hands can soon make an independency for himself as a farmer. Hired labourers or servants are therefore impossible to find but at very big wages; and the few there are know their value so well that the master must treat them most respectfully and indulgently, or down go their tools, on go their hats, and good-bye! As for slave labour, that could only be applied profitably to the raising and manufacture of tobacco in the Southern colonies. In the Northern ones, the severer climate made the clothing, housing, and feeding of negroes too great a charge on their masters, so that there were few black faces seen north of Maryland. These Acts of Trade had been in force for a century now, and acquiesced in as legally binding upon the colonies.

  How was it, then, that the quarrel grew? The paradox that I have drawn above in the case of the restless sons and the patriarchal father holds here: that the quarrel proceeded from an increase rather than a diminution of admiration for Britain on the part of the colonies. One may not call it jealousy, for no American was ever guilty of so servile an emotion, but it was at least keen emulation – a desire to do deeds worthy of their blood, for which they would gain the credit in their own name, not merely as sons and allies of Great Britain.

  The Americans were in general exceedingly proud of their British descent, and the name of an Englishman gave them an idea of all that was great and estimable in human nature: by comparison they regarded the rest of the world as little short of barbarian. By a succession of the most brilliant victories by sea and land – for which the bells rang and the people cheered as loudly in America as anywhere – Great Britain had recently subdued the united powers of France and Spain, the former nation outnumbering her in population by nearly four times, and the latter by three, and acquired possession of a vast extent of territory in both the Indies.

  Since the contest with France had arisen on their account in 1757 and the Peace of 1763, by securing Canada to the British Crown, had freed the colonists from all fear of their ambitious French neighbours, they might well have been expected to add gratitude to respect. But gratitude is spontaneous and not forced, and the English were not always so considerate of the feelings of the freedom-loving American that this generous emotion was stirred.

  It is certainly not true, as Dr Benjamin Franklin pretended, that ‘Every man in England seemed to consider himself as a piece of a Sovereign over America, seemed to jostle himself into the Throne with the King, and talked of Our Subjects in the Colonies.’ But certainly British soldiers would sometimes recall with too great satisfaction that, though a great number of Americans had fought alongside the English in these campaigns, it was only as skirmishers and auxiliaries: there being no American regiments of the line who could successfully oppose the trained forces of the French and Spanish in pitched battle or siege. Some even accused the Americans of cowardice; and there were stories current in the London clubs of a deprecatory and fantastic sort, of which the following will serve as an example. That at the siege of Louisburg, twenty years previously, the Americans placed in the van had run away without firing a shot; and that Sir Peter Warren, the British commander, had then posted them in the rear, assuring them that it was ‘the custom of generals to preserve their best
troops to the last; especially among the ancient Romans, the only nation that ever resembled the Americans in courage and patriotism’.

  Now, the French being gone from Canada, the colonists felt less dependent upon the British than ever before. They believed that they could treat the former savage allies of the French – the Ottawa, Wyandot, and Algonquin Indians – with contempt; and that, because of the degeneracy of the Spanish nation, the Spanish posts in the Havana and New Orleans threatened little danger to themselves. Indeed, they counted themselves the unchallenged masters of the whole American continent and began to cherish large ideas of their coming greatness. My Uncle James, indeed, at the time when the peace terms were published in 1763 greatly lamented that Canada had now passed to the British Crown, for he said that with the removal of the French there would now be no check upon the ambitious and restless Americans; he would have favoured, instead, taking from the French the rich sugar island of Guadaloupe.

  The American condition was, in truth, remarkably flourishing. Trade had prospered almost beyond belief in the midst of the distresses of a war in which they were so immediately concerned. They had paid themselves in two sorts of money: in English by supplying provisions to our troops, and in French by selling contraband to the enemy. Their population continued on the increase, despite the ravages and depredations of the French and Indians. They were a spirited, active, and inventive people, especially the residents of New England, and saw no limits to their future undertakings. As they entertained the highest opinion of their own value and importance and the immense benefit that the British derived from their connexion with America, they believed themselves entitled to every benefit and mark of respect that could be bestowed on them. And though, as I say, they were permitted to pass what laws they pleased for their own provincial government; though the Church of England exercised no authority over them; and though the existing arrangements of trade between themselves and Great Britain worked greatly to their advantage; they began to view the supremacy of the Crown with a suspicious eye.