From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (6 page)

From Canada to the Floridas, the American Revolution also raged on the western frontier, and here too the war went badly. At the outbreak, the colonists hoped for Native American neutrality. Britain actively sought the Indians' assistance. Perceiving the Americans as the greatest threat to their existence and Britain as the most likely source of arms and protection, most tribes turned to the latter, infuriating the embattled Americans. Adams denounced the Indians as "blood Hounds"; Washington called them "beasts of prey."
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The Americans seized the opportunities
created by Indian affiliation with Britain to wage a war of extirpation, where possible driving the Indians further west and solidifying claims to their lands. Even some tribes who collaborated with the Americans suffered at their hands during and after the revolution. "Civilization or death to all American Savages" was the toast offered at a Fourth of July celebration before an American army marched against the Iroquois in 1779.
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This important and often neglected phase of the Revolutionary War began before the Declaration of Independence. In 1774, the governor of Virginia sent an expedition into Shawnee territory in the Ohio Valley, fought a major battle at Point Pleasant on the Ohio River, and forced the Indians to cede extensive land. Three years later, to divert American attention from a British offensive in upstate New York, the British commander at Detroit dispatched Indian raiding parties to attack settlements in Kentucky. Over the next two years, sporadic fighting occurred across the Ohio frontier. The state of Virginia, which had extensive land claims in the region, dispatched George Rogers Clark to attack the British and their Indian allies. In 1778, Clark took forts at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. The British retook Vincennes the following year. Clark took it back one more time, but he could not establish firm control of the region. Settlements in Kentucky—the "dark and bloody ground"—came under attack the next two years.

The Americans opened a second front in the war against the Indians in western New York. The Iroquois Confederacy split, some tribes siding with the British, others with the Americans. When Indians working with Loyalists conducted raids across upstate New York in 1778, threatening food supplies vital to his army, Washington diverted substantial resources and some of his best troops to the theater with instructions that the Iroquois should be not "merely
overrun
but
destroyed
." In one of the best-planned operations of the war, the Americans inflicted heavy losses on the Iroquois and pushed the frontier westward. But they did not achieve their larger aim of crippling Indian power and stabilizing the region. "The nests are destroyed," one American warned, "but the birds are still on the wing."
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The Iroquois became more dependent on the British and more angry with the Americans. During the remainder of the war, they exacted vengeance along the northern frontier.

The Americans fared best in the South. Although threatened by the westward advance of the Georgia colony, the Creeks clung to their long-standing
tradition of neutrality in wars among whites. They also learned valuable lessons from their neighbors, the Cherokees. Having suffered huge losses in the Seven Years' War, the Cherokees welcomed Britain's post-1763 efforts to stop the migration of colonists into the trans-Appalachian West. Out of gratitude for British support and encouraged by British agents, they rose up against the colonists in May 1776. Their timing could not have been worse. Britain had few troops in the southern states at this time. The Americans seized the chance to eliminate a major threat and strengthen their claims to western lands. Georgia and the Carolinas mobilized nearly five thousand men and launched a three-pronged campaign against the Cherokees, destroying some fifty villages, killing and scalping men
and
women, selling some Indians into slavery, and driving others into the mountains. A 1780 punitive expedition did further damage. The Cherokees would in time re-create themselves and develop a flourishing culture, but the war of American independence cost them much of their land and their way of life.
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Adoption in March 1781 of a form of government—the Articles of Confederation—marked a major accomplishment of the war years, but it did not come easily and proved at best an imperfect instrument for waging war and negotiating peace. Discussion of formal union began in the summer of 1776. Pressures to act intensified in the fall of 1777 when Congress, faced with rising inflation, requested that the states furnish additional funds, stop issuing paper money, and impose price controls. Foreign policy exigencies proved equally important. Optimistic after Saratoga that an alliance with France would be reality, Congress believed that agreement on a constitution would affirm the stability of the new government and its commitment to independence, strengthening its position with other nations. Much like the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation were designed to secure foreign support.
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It took nearly four years to complete a process initiated to meet immediate demands. Congress moved expeditiously, approving a draft on November 15, 1777. The states were forbidden from negotiating with other nations. They could not make agreements with each other or maintain an army or navy without the consent of Congress. On the other hand, the Confederation government could not levy taxes or regulate commerce. It could not make treaties that infringed on the legislative rights of any state.
Affirming the principle of state sovereignty, the articles left with the states any powers not "expressly delegated" to the national government. The Congress rejected numerous amendments proposed by the states, but the process took time, and ratification was delayed until March 1781. By that point, many of the deficiencies of the new instrument had been exposed. Congress addressed a most obvious shortcoming, the lack of executive machinery, by creating in 1781 departments for war, finance, and foreign affairs headed by individuals who were not among its members. Robert R. Livingston of New York was named secretary of foreign affairs. Even then, many national leaders believed that the Articles of Confederation were obsolete by the time they had been approved.
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A sudden and dramatic reversal of military fortunes in late 1781 led to negotiations to end the American war. Countering Britain's southern strategy, the United States and France shifted sizeable military forces to Virginia. The French fleet was deployed to the Chesapeake Bay, where the allies in October trapped and forced the surrender of a major British army under the ill-fated Lord Charles Cornwallis on a narrow peninsula along the York River. The victory at Yorktown may have spared the allies from disaster.
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Although Britain still held Charleston and Savannah, Cornwallis's defeat thwarted the southern strategy. It gave a huge boost to faltering American morale and revived French enthusiasm for the war. Yorktown undermined popular support for the war in Britain and, along with the soaring cost of the conflict, caused the fall of the ministry of Lord North and the emergence of a government intent on negotiating with the United States. The war continued for two more years, but after Yorktown attention shifted to the challenging task of peacemaking.

Victory at Yorktown did not give the United States the upper hand in the peace negotiations, however. Washington's army remained short of food, supplies, arms, and ammunition. Britain retained control of some southern states, where fighting still raged. In fact, after Yorktown, the American theater became a sideshow in the global war. In negotiations involving four major nations and numerous lesser ones and a war that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to South Asia, events in far-flung areas often had a major impact. British setbacks in the Caribbean combined
with Yorktown to encourage peace sentiment in England. French naval defeats in the West Indies in the spring of 1782 made Paris more amenable to separate U.S. negotiations with Great Britain.

For the United States, of course, recognition of its independence was the essential condition for peace.
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Independence was the reason the war had been fought, and it formed the indispensable principle of the first statement of war aims drafted in 1779. Congress had hesitated even to raise such issues for fear of exacerbating sectional tensions in wartime. At France's insistence (primarily as a way of bringing U.S. goals into line with its own), the Americans finally did so, and the results made plain the ambitions of the new nation. The territory of the independent republic should extend to the Mississippi River, land that, except for Clark's victories, the United States had not conquered and did not occupy, and to the 31st parallel, the existing border between Georgia and the Floridas. Americans claimed Britain's right acquired from France in 1763 to navigate the Mississippi from its source to the sea.
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They also sought Nova Scotia. New England's fishing industry was valued at nearly $2 million and employed ten thousand men, and access to North Atlantic fisheries comprised a vital war aim.
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In his private and unofficial discussions with British diplomats, Franklin went further. Outraged by the atrocities committed by an enemy he denounced as "the worst and wickedest Nation upon Earth," he urged Britons to "recover the Affections" of their former colonies with a generous settlement including the cession of Canada and the Floridas to the United States.
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In June 1781, again under French pressure and when the war was going badly, Congress significantly modified the instructions to its diplomats in Europe. Reflecting America's dependence on France, the influence of—and bribes provided by—Gerard and his successor, the comte de la Luzerne, and a widespread fear that French support might be lost, the new instructions affirmed that independence should no longer be a precondition to negotiations. The boundaries proposed in 1779 were also deemed not essential. The commissioners could agree to a treaty with Spain that did not provide for access to the Mississippi. In a truly extraordinary provision, Congress instructed the commissioners to place themselves
under French direction, to "undertake nothing . . . without their knowledge and concurrence; and ultimately to govern yourselves by their advice and opinion."
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When the military situation changed dramatically after Yorktown, Congress discussed modifying these highly restrictive instructions but did nothing. Fortunately for the United States, its diplomats in Europe ignored them and acted on the basis of the 1779 draft.
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French and Spanish war aims complicated the work of the American peace commissioners. France and especially Spain had gone to war to avenge the humiliation of 1763, weaken their major rival by detaching Britain's most valuable colonies, and restore the global balance of power. France was committed by treaty to American independence, but not to the boundaries Americans sought. Indeed, at various points in the war it was prepared to accept a partition that would have left the southern colonies in Britain's possession. A weaker United States, Vergennes and his advisers reasoned, would be more dependent on France. France did not seek to regain Canada, but it preferred continued British dominance there to keep an independent United States in check. It also sought access to the North Atlantic fisheries.

France's ties with Spain through their 1779 alliance further jeopardized the achievement of U.S. war aims. Although it provided vital assistance to the United States, Spain never consented to a formal alliance or committed itself to American independence. Because France had promised to fight until Spain recovered Gibraltar, America's major war aim could be held hostage by events in the Mediterranean. Spain also sought to recover the Floridas from Britain. Even more than France, it preferred to keep the United States weak and hemmed in as close to the Appalachians and as far north as possible. Spain saw no reason to grant the United States access to the Mississippi.

Ironically, but not surprisingly, given the strange workings of international politics, the United States found its interests more in line with those of its enemy, Great Britain, than its ally, France, and France's ally, Spain. To be sure, Britons acquiesced in American independence only grudgingly. As late as 1782, well after Yorktown, top officials insisted on negotiating on the basis of the
uti possidetis,
the territory actually held at the time, which would have left Britain in control at least of the southernmost American states. King George III contemplated negotiating with
the states individually, a classic divide-and-conquer ploy. The British government would have concluded a separate peace with France if expedient. Even after Lord North resigned in March 1782 and a new government took power, there was talk of an "Irish solution," an autonomous America within the British Empire.
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Gradually, top British officials and especially William Petty Fitzmaurice, the earl of Shelburne, shifted to a more conciliatory approach. Conservative, aloof, and secretive, known for his duplicity, Shelburne was called "the Jesuit of Berkeley Square." He was persuaded to adopt a more accommodating approach by his friend Richard Oswald, a seventy-six-year-old acquaintance and admirer of Franklin. Oswald owned property in the West Indies, West Florida, and the southern colonies. He had lived six years in Virginia. He and Shelburne, in the latter's words, "
decidedly tho reluctantly
" concluded that Britain's essential aim should be to separate the United States from France. Independence was acceptable if it could accomplish that.
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They hoped that an America free of France through a shared history, language, and culture would gravitate back toward Britain's influence and become its best customer.
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Given the different parties involved and the conflicts and confluences of interests, the peace negotiations were extremely complicated. They resembled, historian Jonathan Dull has written, a "circus of many rings," with all the performers walking a tightrope.
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Military action on land or sea even in distant parts of the globe could tip the balance one way or the other. Europe and America formed a very small world in the 1780s. The key players knew and indeed in some cases were related to each other. Diplomats moved back and forth between London and Paris with relative ease. At one point, two competing British cabinet ministers had representatives in Paris talking to the Americans. In the latter stages, Franklin's fellow commissioners John Adams and John Jay went off in directions that might have been disastrous.