The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff Page B
Book: The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff
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Authors: Robert Middlekauff
Tags: United States, History, Military, Colonial Period (1600-1775), Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies)
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an Indian war. Now it had happened, and official action could no longer be postponed. But there was delay: not until October 7, 1763, did Grenville's ministry issue the proclamation closing the West between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River to white occupation. The proclamation also established three new colonies -- Quebec, East Florida, and West Florida -- carved out from the French settlements of the St. Lawrence Valley and from areas formerly claimed by Spain and ceded to Britain in the peace ending the Seven Years War. 13
The proclamation did not end Pontiac's Rebellion; the grinding efforts of British troops and American militia did that, though fighting continued until the end of 1764. The proclamation did not end the white man's movement into the West either. British troops occasionally tried to bar emigration and succeeded only in earning the enmity of settlers, fur traders, and speculators in land. The Virginians, for example, who had settled in the Kanawha Valley almost twenty years before, and who were driven out by the rebellious Indians, insisted on going back to their farms. According to the terms of the proclamation, they could not, and British troop commanders tried to keep them out. These farmers and hundreds of other pioneers were bitterly resentful, and in late 1764 and early 1765 hundreds made their way over the mountains to the Kanawha. Other like-minded men and women, now contemptuous of British troops who had failed to protect the frontier, decided to flout the proclamation. The result was a steady migration into western Virginia, Maryland, southwestern Pennsylvania, and then northwestern Pennsylvania. 14
As defined by Grenville's ministry, most other problems -- more familiar to the ministry -- can be reduced to one word: money. This is surely an over-simplification, yet the need for money played a part in every
____________________
12
Howard Peckham, Pontiac and the Indian Uprising ( Princeton, N.J., 1947).
13
The proclamation is reprinted in EHD , 640-43. See also R. A. Humphreys, "Lord Shelburne and the Proclamation of 1763", EHR , 49 ( 1934), 20-64.
14
Alvord, Mississippi Valley , I, passim.
important decision made by Grenville regarding the colonies -- and for that matter by the ministries that followed up to 1776.
A look at the national debt in 1763 would have sent any minister's heart down into his shoes. As of January 5, 1763, according to Exchequer accounts, the funded debt amounted to £122,603,336 -- an enormous sum. Moreover, it carried an annual interest of £4,409,797. A year later the debt was almost £7,000,000 larger, and by January 1766, six months after Grenville left office, it had increased another £7,000,000. 15
Financing the interest on the debt was a problem that absorbed a good deal of attention; and retiring it, or even a part of it, seemed at times out of the question. Trade was depressed in Britain when Grenville took office, the consequences of the end of the war and the decline of heavy expenditures. Levying more taxes, or increasing existing ones, was not an attractive solution: ordinary Englishmen had grown restive under the burdens of supporting an overstuffed government and a glorious war. And well they might. Land had long been heavily taxed and no relief seemed in sight. A landowner, of course, might consider himself fortunate; by conventional social opinion he was one of the chosen of the Lord. Virtue, to say nothing of the right to vote, resided in him. So perhaps he should not mind too much when his money was spent advancing the nation's interest and glory throughout the world. But what of the poor man solaced only by beer and tobacco? Beer was heavily hit during the war and made to return over half a million pounds a year. Tobacco too was made to pay, and many other things as well: newspapers, sugar, paper, linen, advertisements. The poor did not feel the taxes on all these items, but the gentry and some of the middling
The proclamation did not end Pontiac's Rebellion; the grinding efforts of British troops and American militia did that, though fighting continued until the end of 1764. The proclamation did not end the white man's movement into the West either. British troops occasionally tried to bar emigration and succeeded only in earning the enmity of settlers, fur traders, and speculators in land. The Virginians, for example, who had settled in the Kanawha Valley almost twenty years before, and who were driven out by the rebellious Indians, insisted on going back to their farms. According to the terms of the proclamation, they could not, and British troop commanders tried to keep them out. These farmers and hundreds of other pioneers were bitterly resentful, and in late 1764 and early 1765 hundreds made their way over the mountains to the Kanawha. Other like-minded men and women, now contemptuous of British troops who had failed to protect the frontier, decided to flout the proclamation. The result was a steady migration into western Virginia, Maryland, southwestern Pennsylvania, and then northwestern Pennsylvania. 14
As defined by Grenville's ministry, most other problems -- more familiar to the ministry -- can be reduced to one word: money. This is surely an over-simplification, yet the need for money played a part in every
____________________
12
Howard Peckham, Pontiac and the Indian Uprising ( Princeton, N.J., 1947).
13
The proclamation is reprinted in EHD , 640-43. See also R. A. Humphreys, "Lord Shelburne and the Proclamation of 1763", EHR , 49 ( 1934), 20-64.
14
Alvord, Mississippi Valley , I, passim.
important decision made by Grenville regarding the colonies -- and for that matter by the ministries that followed up to 1776.
A look at the national debt in 1763 would have sent any minister's heart down into his shoes. As of January 5, 1763, according to Exchequer accounts, the funded debt amounted to £122,603,336 -- an enormous sum. Moreover, it carried an annual interest of £4,409,797. A year later the debt was almost £7,000,000 larger, and by January 1766, six months after Grenville left office, it had increased another £7,000,000. 15
Financing the interest on the debt was a problem that absorbed a good deal of attention; and retiring it, or even a part of it, seemed at times out of the question. Trade was depressed in Britain when Grenville took office, the consequences of the end of the war and the decline of heavy expenditures. Levying more taxes, or increasing existing ones, was not an attractive solution: ordinary Englishmen had grown restive under the burdens of supporting an overstuffed government and a glorious war. And well they might. Land had long been heavily taxed and no relief seemed in sight. A landowner, of course, might consider himself fortunate; by conventional social opinion he was one of the chosen of the Lord. Virtue, to say nothing of the right to vote, resided in him. So perhaps he should not mind too much when his money was spent advancing the nation's interest and glory throughout the world. But what of the poor man solaced only by beer and tobacco? Beer was heavily hit during the war and made to return over half a million pounds a year. Tobacco too was made to pay, and many other things as well: newspapers, sugar, paper, linen, advertisements. The poor did not feel the taxes on all these items, but the gentry and some of the middling
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