Long Live The American Empire

Long Live The American Empire

Jason Gragg

Copyright 2013 by Jason Gragg

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1: The Great American Rebellion.

For two years, a rebellion had raged through the American colonies. What had started as a local uprising in Massachusetts over tea smuggling had exploded into thirteen of Britain's provinces in the Americas in open revolt. Nova Scotia and Jamaica remained loyal, but the former did so more because the Royal Navy was stationed there, and the latter primarily because it was an island, and the Royal Navy still ruled the seas. Had the Indians or Spanish endangered them through piracy, had there been a need for a colonial fleet instead of just a land militia, the loyalty of even Bermuda and Newfoundland would be in doubt. Quebec was loyal, partially because the colonials raised nearly as much of a ruckus over them getting to keep their laws as they did over suspending those of Massachusetts, and partially because the invasion ended in disaster. To hear the papers tell of it, Ireland and Scotland would be next, and the whole British Empire would become a republic if the revolution succeeded – or more likely, many little republics, seventeen in North America alone.

Before Saratoga it seemed only a matter of time until American independence. After Saratoga, it became a losing struggle, kept alive by the hopes of a smaller America still being conceded, or given more rights, by foreign war or massive debts leaving the crown to come to terms. Or by men who would not bend the knee for anything less than freedom and equality, no matter how hopeless their struggle became. If Chief Pontiac could make Britain negotiate, why not Chief Washington, Hancock, or Shays?

Benedict Arnold was an unlikely loyalist, although generations have remembered him as the hero who saved the Crown, and with it America, from anarchy. As the story goes, although he eagerly joined the early American Rebellion – and what good Connecticut man wouldn't - he soon came to find its radicalism far more disturbing than anything the crown ever did to Massachusetts. From the terrorism of the Sons of Liberty, to the open embrace of Deism by America's intellectual elite, to the extending of the franchise to slaves and other rabble and the opening of America's doors to any European peasant who could book passage, British rule seemed the lesser of two evils. And on a personal level, the war had ruined his business, that inflation had destroyed his savings, and that he feared a continued conflict would do far more to destroy America's economy than a hundred Coercive Acts.

Yet there is always more to history than that in a school textbook. Generations of Republicans have claimed that Benedict Arnold was motivated by the promise of a lifetime seat in parliament, noble rank, and a lavish estate. That he was bitter about being passed over for a promotion, bitter that his heroism in battle at Quebec, for which he gave a leg to the rebels, and Ticonderoga, for which he gave them cannon had won him nothing but debt. That he was bitter that Washington was given what he considered his rightful place as commander-in-chief. And to be sure, his letters reveal something of both of his claimed motivations – he at times wrote about his apprehension towards the rebellion, and far more often about his financial and personal issues with the rebels, but his letters do not reveal anything of the scheming, greedy caricature which he has since become in the minds of history's contrarians.

Burgoyne and Arnold's letters largely agree on the contents of their fateful meeting, differing primarily in how they viewed the other's motivations. Arnold portrayed himself as wanting to end the war with as few lives lost as possible, and saw Burgoyne as a fool whose intransigence almost led their meeting to ruin. Burgoyne, perhaps colored by his views of the man's later political career saw Arnold as a power-seeker, a man who would sell America to Britain only at an enormous price. The negotiations had taken nearly an hour, the exact words forgotten by both men, until at 2 AM they reached their final agreement.

Amnesty for my men and seats in the London parliament. I can give you an army, but it takes far more than military supremacy to rule a continent this size. And a brigadier general's pension, Arnold had demanded. Any less and I'm holding onto our plans and you're losing this battle.

They'll still call you a traitor, you know. You can drive as hard a bargain as you want, but this continent will never forgive you, both agree Burgoyne had said in their midnight, clandestine meeting.

I am already a traitor to half the Empire and a patriot to the other half. All this does is change who calls me which, Arnold is agreed to have said with a wry smile.

It is here that the letters diverge. Arnold would claim until his dying day that his next line was at least this way I do what is best for my country. Burgoyne's letters do not mention this statement, and it is thought by many to be a later embellishment on Arnold's part.

You know full well I can not give you seats in Parliament. Only Parliament itself can do that.

Then you and your soldiers will be called time and time again to America. Use your influence. I'm making you the Hero of Saratoga! They shall listen! Until Colonials have the rights of Englishmen, or something close enough, they will never be quiet subjects of the crown.

It was Burgoyne's turn to laugh. Truly, Americans had an idealistic view of Parliament. If only they knew! Britain's parliament made the colonial assemblies even before the rebellion, for all their incumbency and lack of real debate, look like shining beacons of democracy! The House of Lords, through which all legislation must pass, could be reliably counted on to do whatever the king said; if they refused, the king would simply appoint new lords, as George III had been doing for most of his reign. The House of Commons was anything but – a city like Bristol might have real elections, but the vast majority of seats were either pocket boroughs where the few voters were personally bribed, or had a property qualification set so high that no commoner had any hope of voting, let alone winning an election.

The rights of Englishmen indeed. That could very well be arranged...

Burgoyne would gain a reputation as a war hero, and go on to command British forces in India and famously during the French Revolution. Arnold would rise far higher – for the Connecticut Compromise he inspired did as much to end the Rebellion as his double-cross at Saratoga, and the Arnold ministry, for all its detractors, would be remembered by many on both sides of the Atlantic as the high point of the Anglo-American Union.

It is easy to forget when reading about its historical importance that Saratoga was indeed a battle. That two thousand Americans and three hundred Britons would lose their lives that day to musket shots and bayonets, until it became clear that Burgoyne's army was more than prepared for anything the larger colonist force tried, and that Horatio Gates was incompetent at best and Arnold displaying none of the skill that won him Ticonderoga. Even before the battle was over, many of the militiamen had already begun to suspect treason, although as many suspected Gates at the time as Arnold.

Many of the men taken prisoner on that day, despite Arnold's intercession to spare them from being hung as traitors, would never forgive his own treason and would live to take up arms again against the Crown.

****

Louis XVI of France had long been ambivalent about the American Rebellion. He was fond of the rebel envoy Benjamin Franklin, who certainly made a powerful case that French interests would best be served by cutting the British Empire in half, and his foreign minister was enthusiastically trying to push intervention. Yet America, for all the flourish of their declaration and their rights being trampled, was clearly intended to become a Republic or thirteen. And in this day and age, there were far too many Frenchmen who wanted a Republic at home for him to feel comfortable supporting one in Britain's colonies.

He was still considering it as late as October of 1777. But the colonial disaster at Saratoga convinced him he had waited too long, that his opportunity had vanished, that the rebels simply didn't have a chance.

Needless to say, if France was staying out, then so was Spain. Gibraltar and Minorca were appealing, but without French troops they had little hope and a great deal to fear from intervention. After all, they did hold the other half of the Americas.

And the Prince of Orange, neither being stupid nor insane, was not about to go along with this war without French and Spanish aid. This wasn't the era of the Raid on the Medway or the Glorious Revolution anymore. The Dutch were just too weak to oppose Britain alone.

No France would mean no foreign support. And the loss at Saratoga meant no France. If America was to win its independence, it would have to do so alone.

****

The rebellion would not end at Saratoga. It would sputter on in the backcountry long after Washington was hanged for treason, after Boston was sacked and John Hancock met the same fate. Historians conventionally date the end of the American Rebellion to 1784 and the death in battle of guerilla leader and third president, Daniel Shays, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. And to be sure, the strain of radicalism this rebellion embodied never truly left American politics. Even in New York at the height of the empire, under the watchful eye of the Colossus of King George the Great, there would be countless people who saw men like Washington, Adams, and Jefferson as heroes and as an example worth emulating. But never again would this rebellion threaten to tear Britannia asunder, to replace a King with a President; that would be a task for later generations to finish.

George Washington was horrified by the news of Benedict Arnold's betrayal. New York was gone. An army was lost, a nation cut in half. But there were still twelve colonies left, and Britain lacked the manpower to hold a continent – so long as his army, the Continental Congress, and the hope they provided survived.

But that survival proved an enormously difficult task. Philadelphia, America's largest city and provisional capital, itself soon fell. The winter at Valley Forge was a hard one, and the New Englanders were too busy fighting to free Newport and hold Vermont too provide his own army with anything in the way of aid. Congress itself had fled to the Pennsylvanian interior, but was refusing despite Washington's advice to seek a defensible stronghold in Virginia; losing the Mid-Atlantic, as far as they were concerned, meant surrendering the very idea of Union.

Washington sympathized – they certainly had a point with regard to morale. But they certainly weren't making his job any easier. With British reinforcements being sent from the New York front after Saratoga, it had become clear by spring of 1778 there was no hope of retaking Philadelphia. And nowhere left to retreat without Congress being captured.

It was for this reason that, in June with the Redcoats fast approaching, to write his famous farewell address to the Continental Congress; a text all schoolchildren must memorize in its entirety, but whose most relevant lines are nonetheless reproduced here:

"I dare not disobey your orders, for a nation where generals override the people would be worse than even the tyranny of King George. But I am obligated by conscience and patriotism to give you honest counsel. This battle can not be won. Lancaster, this capital in exile where you have chosen so foolishly to make your stand, is indefensible. Pennsylvania is indefensible, but America is not!

It does America no good for our finest and duly elected representatives to die here, hanged beside me as