First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [93]
Britain had based her calculations on ending the rebellion by the spring of 1777; instead, in 1778 a successful conclusion in America was as far off as ever. The entry of France added force to the arguments that the war was unwinnable and brought about an astonishing reversal by Lord North’s government—an offer of peace terms and of conciliation to the Colonies, which it was hoped would bring them back to the house of the parent and break off their betrothal to France. The Conciliatory Propositions, as they were called, were submitted to a stunned and unbelieving Parliament in February, 1778. Their purpose was rather to placate the Opposition than to negotiate peace with the Americans. The Opposition, which enjoyed the Commons’ most eloquent and effective speakers, Fox and Burke, continually denounced the war as unjust, and as certain to be ruinous to Great Britain by the ever-increasing cost of maintaining enlarged armies and fleets at the price of increased taxes.
To stem the disaffection, the government made its peace proposal for the sake of its own hold on office, the primary concern of every government, regardless of policy. A Peace Commission was appointed in March, headed by Frederick, fifth Earl Carlisle, a young man of great wealth, scion of the Howards and owner of the regal Castle Howard. Known chiefly as a fashion plate, he was otherwise qualified mainly as the son-in-law of Lord Gower, a prominent member of the Bedford Gang, a political group faithful to the King and Lord North. Ample wealth and great estate are not attributes that as a rule accustom the possessor to walk softly and adjust to compromise. Life had not trained the Earl of Carlisle to be a negotiator, especially not vis-à-vis followers of Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin.
Except for one missing element, the peace terms proposed by Britain appeared to be a package of everything the Americans wanted: exemption from taxation by Parliament, membership in the House of Commons accepted as a principle (method and numbers were to be worked out in discussion), recognition of Congress as a constitutional body, repeal of the tea duty and other punitive acts—in short, everything except the grant of independence, on which the Americans insisted as a prior condition of, not a subject for, negotiation. Upon this rock of independence the mission foundered, nor was there any mention of withdrawal from the country of British troops and ships, another American condition; and without these conditions, members of Congress would neither meet nor talk with the peace commissioners. In any event, the peace overture had come too late. Having pledged to France to make no separate peace, the Americans could not have come to terms with the British even if they had wanted to. “The pride of men,” Edmund Burke noted, “will not often suffer reason to have any scope until it can be no longer of service.”
To end a war and restore peace in its place needs delicacy. The tactics of Carlisle and his colleague on the commission—Governor Johnstone, so called because he had formerly served as Governor of West Florida—were so heavy-handed as to suggest that they were intended to fail, as perhaps they were. The British government, hating and rejecting the thought of independence, had, as was suspected, planned the Peace Commission as a gesture to quiet the Opposition, without wanting a positive result. They were not likely to get one by Governor Johnstone’s methods, which were as counterproductive as possible, as we shall see. Before his service as Governor of West Florida, he had been a naval officer of the aggressive, dictatorial and quarrelsome kind. Given to dueling, he had been found guilty by court-martial of insubordination in a duel, but not sentenced except by reprimand because of personal bravery in action. In Florida his staff had officially protested his autocratic conduct.