The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [134]
Rockingham, as leader, grew so frustrated that in 1776 he proposed a “secession” by opponents of the war, that is, a deliberate absenting of themselves from Parliament as their most visible protest against ministerial policy. Solidarity on this issue too was unobtainable; only his own followers agreed. Dignified and stately, the Rockingham Whigs retired to their estates, but after a year of ineffectiveness drifted back. They were “amiable people,” wrote Charles Fox to Burke, but “unfit to storm a citadel.” Burke, making an essential point about these men as ministers, replied that their virtues were the result of “plentiful fortunes, assured rank and quiet homes.”
Submission of the rebels was no nearer. For all their disadvantage in shortage of arms and supplies and of trained and disciplined troops and in the short-term enlistments that were their most disabling factor, they had a cause to fight for, a commander of heroic stature and unflinching will and occasional stunning limited victories as at Trenton and Princeton to reinvigorate morale. Britain’s enemies abroad were supplying arms and British resort to deliberate wrecking and pillage of property and to recruitment of Indians for terrorist tactics stimulated American fighting spirit when it faded under hardship. British overestimation of the internal support to be expected from Loyalists and the failure—which owed something still to scorn of colonials even on their own side—to mobilize and organize a Loyalist fighting force left them dependent on the long trans-Atlantic haul of Europeans. Fear that France and Spain would take advantage of their trouble by a naval offensive or even invasion required maintenance of troops for home defense and hard-to-spare ships in home waters. The drain of the whole enterprise alarmed many. “The thinking friends of the Government are by no means sanguine,” wrote Edward Gibbon, who had been elected to Parliament in 1774 as a supporter of North.
In February 1777 General Burgoyne came home to plan with Germain a knockout campaign that by effecting a juncture on the Hudson of British forces coming down from Canada and others coming up from New York would cut off New England from the rest of the colonies and end the war before the next Christmas. Burgoyne returned to lead the northern force in a march pointed at Albany, but the pincer movement suffered from a fatal deficiency in having only one arm. The bulk of the southern arm under the Commander-in-Chief, Sir William Howe, who had designed his own campaign without reference to his colleague, was moving in the other direction, against Philadelphia. Sir Henry Clinton, in command of the remaining forces in New York, could not move up the Hudson without the main Army. Burgoyne had started in June. As the summer progressed, reports were disquieting: Burgoyne’s supplies were dwindling dangerously; a foray to capture stores at Bennington was sharply defeated; an American Army was gathering in strength. Howe was still occupying himself in Pennsylvania; Clinton, though given to fits of paralysis of will, made a lastminute move northward in desperation; no juncture had yet been made. Washington, engaged against Howe outside Philadelphia and discovering from his movements that there was no danger of Howe’s turning north, wrote to General Putnam on learning of the victory at Bennington that he hoped now “the whole force of New England will turn out and … intirely crush General Burgoyne.”
Less concerned with these events than with the threat of France, Lord Chatham rose to his feet on 20 November 1777 to demand an “immediate cessation of hostilities.” Speaking before news was known of the event that was to mark the watershed of the war and justify his argument, he said, “I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer