LORD NORTH: Apr. 15–Hey, I Just Did What Ben Said To (Updated May 13, 2016)

Benjamin Franklin.

On this day in 1774, a British newspaper published an open letter by autodidact (high school dropout) Benjamin Franklin to Britain’s prime minister–Oxonian Frederick, Lord North. 

The newspaper was published in England, in The Public Advertiser. Franklin signed himself "A Friend to Military Government". 

He wrote as from the Smyrna Coffee House on St. James Street in London; this was for decades a well-known meeting place of the liberal Whig party. North was the leader of the ruling Tory party.

Lord North.

Franklin’s sarcastic letter suggested to Lord North that King George should ASAP respond to the insolence of the  American colonial rebels as follows:

• Impose martial law in the colonies, i.e., closing the civil courts.
• Appoint a “King’s Viceroy of all North America" to keep order.
• Collect its taxes through whatever intimidation was required.
• Then sell to Spain the impoverished colonies and its colonists ("the soil and the people on it").

Did Lord North take the letter seriously? Based on his subsequent actions, it certainly seems as though he did...

• The next month, in May 1774, his government passed the Massachusetts Government Act, imposing martial law on Massachusetts, where the rebels were most vocal.
• General Thomas Gage was appointed to institute the military government.
• He was made the colony’s royal governor.

The response of the colonies was the Declaration of Independence, which followed in 1776. The colonies were no longer so easy to sell to Spain.

An Open Letter to Lord North

Smyrna Coffee-House, April 5. [1774]
For the Public Advertiser. [Published April 15, 1774]

To Lord North.

My Lord,

All your small Politicians, who are very numerous in the English Nation, from the patriotic Barber to the patriotic Peer, when big with their Schemes for the Good of poor Old England, imagine they have a Right to give Advice to the Minister, and condemn Administration if they do not adopt their Plan. I, my Lord, who have no mean Opinion of my Abilities, which is justified by the Attention that is paid to me when I harangue at the Smyrna and Old Slaughter’s, am willing to contribute my Mite to the public Welfare; and have a Proposal to make to your Lordship, which I flatter myself will be approved of by the Ministry, and if carried into Execution, will quiet all the Disturbances in America, procure a decent Revenue from our Colonies, make our royal Master (at least there) a King de facto, as well as de jure; and finally, as it may be managed, procure a round Sum towards discharging the national Debt.

My Scheme is, without Delay to introduce into North America a Government absolutely and entirely Military. The Opposition which some People suspect would be made by the Colonies, is a mere Bugbear: The Sight of a few Regiments of bold Britons, appearing with Ensigns displayed, and in all the Pomp of War, a Specimen of which may be seen every Summer at the Grand Review on Wimbledon Common, with that great Commander G——l G——e at their Head, accompanied with a Detachment from the Artillery, and Half a Dozen short Sixes, would so intimidate the Americans, that the General might march through the whole Continent of North America, and would have little else to do but to accept of the Submission of the several Towns as he passed. But as the Honour would be too great for one Man to reduce to absolute Subjection so great an Extent of Territory, I would propose that a separate Command be given to L——d G—— G——e, who by his animated Speeches in the House, and coinciding so entirely with your Lordship’s Opinion on the proper Methods for humbling America, deserves a Share in the Fame of such a grand Exploit. Let him have one half of the Army under his Direction, and march from New York to South Carolina. No one can object to the Nomination, as his Military Prowess is upon Record. 

The Regiments that are in America, with those who are about to embark, will be amply sufficient, without being at the Expence of sending more Troops. Those who served in America the last War, know that the Colonists are a dastardly Set of Poltroons; and though they are descended from British Ancestors, they are degenerated to such a Degree, that one born in Britain is equal to twenty Americans. The Yankey Doodles have a Phrase when they are not in a Humour for fighting, which is become proverbial, I don’t feel bould To-day. When they make this Declaration, there is no prevailing on them to attack the Enemy or defend themselves. If contrary to Expectation they should attempt an Opposition, procure Intelligence when it happens not to be their fighting Day, attack them and they will fly like Sheep pursued by a Wolf. 

When all North America have thus bent their Neck to the Yoke designed for them, I would propose that the Method made use of by the Planters in the West Indies may be adopted, who appoint what they call a Negro Driver, who is chosen from among the Slaves. It is observed that the little Authority that is given him over his Fellow Slaves, attaches him to his Master’s Interest, and his Cruelty would be without Bounds were he not restrained; but the Master is certain, that the utmost Exertion of Strength will be exacted by this cruel Task-Master for the Proprietor’s Emolument. Let all the Colonists be enrolled in the Militia, subject of course to Martial Law. Appoint a certain Number of Officers from among the conquered People, with good Pay, and other Military Emoluments; they will secure their Obedience in the District where they command.

Let no other Courts be allowed through the whole Continent but Courts Martial. An Inhabitant, who disobeys an Order, may by a Court Martial be sentenced to receive from One Hundred to a Thousand Lashes in a frosty Morning, according to the Nature of his Offence. Where Punishment is thus secure, this Advantage will accrue, that there will not be the same Necessity of hanging up so many poor Devils as in this free Country; by which Means the Service of many an able Man is lost to the Community. I humbly propose that the General and Commander in Chief be vested with the Power, and called by the Name of the King’s Viceroy of all North America. This will serve to impress the Americans with greater Respect for the first Magistrate, and have a Tendency to secure their Submission. All Orders issuing from this supreme Authority to have the Force of Laws.

After this happy Change of Government, how easy to collect what Taxes you please in North America. When the Colonists are drained of their last Shilling, suppose they should be sold to the best Bidder. As they lie convenient for France or Spain, it may be reasonably expected one of those little Powers would be a Purchaser. I think Spain is to be preferred, as their Power hath more of the Ready than France. I will venture a Conjecture, that the Ministry might get at least Two Millions for the Soil, and the People upon it. With such a Sum what glorious Things might he not achieve! Suppose it should be applied towards the Payment of one hundredth Part of the National Debt, I [it?] would give him an Opportunity of drawing down upon him the Blessing of the Poor by making him to take off the Halfpenny Duty on Porter. Considering the probable Stability of the present Ministry, this Honour may be reserved for your Lordship.

My Lord, excuse the Crudity of these indigested Hints, which your Wisdom is so capable of improving; and believe me, with infinite Respect, Your Lordship’s Most obedient Humble Servant,

A Friend To Military Government

(Bold face added by your blogger to show the main points of the letter.)

BIRTH: July 10–Oxonian Edmund Clerihew Bentley (Updated Feb. 21, 2016)

1. Edmund Clerihew Bentley, Ever so gently,
Did what he had to do, And gave us the clerihew.

Edmund Bentley, in '75, / Wasted no time in coming alive. / Alone he created the clerihew. / Read on a bit, and I'll share a few.

At 16, at St. Paul's School, England, before going up to Merton College, Oxford, he invented a kind of verse, a potted biography made up of two rhyming couplets, the first line of which is provided by the name of a famous person.

A collection of clerihews appears in his first book, Biography for Beginners (1905).

The verse form was subsequently picked up by G.K. Chesterton and W.H. Auden. An examples from Auden follows below.

The most venerated clerihews are the ones that do their job in a very small number of words.

The authors of the unnumbered clerihews are identified. The seven numbered ones, for better or verse, are mine.

2. The elder William Pitt,
Dreamt of empire wholly Brit.
So he chased the French away,
But they came back for the USA.

3. George the Third
Gave the word:
"Tax the Yanks!"
They said: "No thanks!"

4. Frederick Lord North
Sent tax men forth -
Boston's sailors made them swim.
How could he have been so dim?

5. General George Washington -
After Yorktown said: "I'm done!"
But, lined up at his residence,
Folks said: "Please be first of our Presidents!"

Here's one inspired by a comment in 2013 by Wendell Fitzgerald (to whom I give a tip of the hat):

6. Reformer Henry George
Hammered at the land-tax forge.
He tried to make it the major key
For eliminating poverty.

Now that you have gotten the idea, it is time to appreciate the classic examples.

The first-ever clerihew was written about Sir Humphry Davy by Bentley while at St. Paul's.

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Here's another Bentley:

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote Principles of Political Economy.

Auden's Literary Graffiti includes:

Sir Henry Rider Haggard
Was completely staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced, "I am She!"

The subject of a clerihew written by the students of Sherborne School in England, was Alan Turing, the founder of computing, who was at King's College, Cambridge before going to Princeton University and joining Einstein's Institute for Advanced International Studies before he became part of the Bletchley Park code-breaking group.

Turing
Must have been alluring
To get made a don
So early on.

To which I offer an alternative that gains points for being more topical but loses them again for being longer.

7. Turing at Bletchley, says the lore,
Broke Nazi code and shortened the war.
But his nation later looked away
As he suffered dearly for being gay.

A clerihew much appreciated by chemists is cited in Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes, and describes the inventor of the thermos bottle (or Dewar flask):

Sir James Dewar
Is smarter than you are -
None of you asses
Can liquefy gases.

In 1983, Games Magazine ran a contest titled "Do You Clerihew?" The winning entry, which I savor again and again, each time appreciating it the more, was:

Did Descartes
Depart
With the thought
"Therefore I'm not"?

Bentley would have wallowed in the subtlety of the Descartes clerihew, in which the amount of time left to think–and therefore be–asymptotically approaches zero. Bentley's first mystery book was Trent's Last Case (1913), in which the detective hero triumphally announces how he has uncovered a brilliant solution to the murder... but is then shown by a lesser mind why this solution is, inconveniently, wrong.

More Oxford bios here.

GW: July 4 - Why GW's Oxonian South Rebelled (Updated Dec. 22, 2015)

What we celebrate on July 4 - the Declaration of Independence.

This day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Unanimously.

This document formally severed the colonies from the rule of the British Crown.

It laid the blame for the divorce at the feet of George III.

Just 364 days earlier, on July 5, 1775, the Continental Congress had adopted the "Olive Branch Petition". It was written by John Dickinson, worried about mob fever stirred up by rebel agitation. It appealed directly to George III, hoping for  reconciliation. Dickinson wrote:

Your Majesty’s Ministers ... have compelled us to arm in our own defense. 

His thought was that maybe George III was unaware of the mischief that his Prime Minister, Lord North, was making in the colonies. But King George refused to receive the Olive Branch Petition. During the year that followed, public opinion in the colonies turned round completely. The Declaration of Independence points the finger straight at George III: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations..."

What Turned Around the South?

The American Revolution began in Massachusetts and spread through New England. The Stamp Act and taxes on tea seem adequate explanations of the motives of the Yankees, who originated as  dissenters from the Church of England and the Crown. Their intellectual base was in Cambridge University (Cromwell was a Cambridge man. So was John Harvard.)

Dickinson was writing from a different perspective, that of Pennsylvania man. William Penn was not hostile to the Crown. He was a Quaker, but he had the blessing and a grant of land from the King.

In fact from New Jersey down to Georgia, grants from the British Crown were a major contributor to settlement of the region. Royalists abounded in the south in 1775.

What changed the minds of these royalists and united them against George III?  The New England perspective is not enough to explain it. The thinking of the leaders of the colonies in the south needs more emphasis. The religious-intellectual battles between Oxford and Cambridge as well as specific laws passed by Parliament are useful reference points.

How Britain's Civil War Affected the American Colonies

George Washington's grandfather and uncle left England for the American colonies for religious and economic reasons–the two factors were connected!

GW's great-grandfather Rev. Lawrence Washington was educated at Oxford and was prominent in expelling dissenters from the Oxford faculty when Charles I was on the throne believing in his divine right to rule.

When Cromwell and the Cambridge Puritans defeated and beheaded Charles I, Lawrence Washington was demoted from a grand Church of England parish to a small one. His wife was deeply embarrassed at the loss of status and comfort. She moved in with her uncle in Tring and arranged for two of her sons, John (GW's grandfather) and Lawrence, to emigrate to Virginia where their future looked more promising. A third child followed them, but eventually returned to Britain.

Most short histories of the United States make the issue between the United States and Britain to be one primarily of taxes, which works for New England. The dispute began with the first passage in 1765 of the Stamp Act.

• Pitt the Elder (alumnus of Trinity College, Oxford) had championed the colonists by sending British troops to fight the French and their Indian allies. He forced the French up to Canada and prevailed there. The Stamp Act was a revenue-raiser to support a continued British army presence. From the British perspective, it seemed reasonable that the colonies should pay for their own defense, and preferably even for past wars on the colonies' behalf.
• The colonists objected to “no taxation without representation” – but in truth they were less eager for representation than they were eager to stop being taxed.

Colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With its enactment in November, many colonists called for a boycott of British goods and organized attacks on tax collectors and customhouses. Most of the hostility was on the part of the New England traders, who were more hostile to the British Crown in the first place. Many of the earliest New England settlers came to the colonies to get away from the Church of England. They were also the colonies most affected by taxes on trade, as agricultural goods from the South tended to go north to New England for processing and shipment.

The Cambridge Model of Colonization

The New England settlers could be said to have followed a Cambridge model of colonization –  dissenters seeking the right to pursue their religion without fear of being considered treasonous. These dissenter-traders were outraged by the Stamp Act. Their protests were enough to get it repealed in March 1766.

But most other colonies were not in such a revolutionary frame of mind until 1774. Even the Tea Act in 1773, which was more than a tax increase, would not have fomented a revolution. It gave the British East India Company a monopoly on the American tea trade by exempting it from the higher tax. Massachusetts colonists organized the “Boston Tea Party,” which resulted in the dumping of an estimated £18,000 of tea into Boston Harbor.

Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists, in 1774. The Coercive Acts included closing Boston to merchant shipping, establishing British military rule in Massachusetts, immunizing British officials from criminal prosecution in America and requiring colonists to quarter British troops.

The Oxford Model

The Oxford model of colonization was one of getting a grant of land – sometimes a huge grant – in return for carrying the British flag to the American continent.

From the time of Sir Walter Raleigh, loyal Brits went to America in search of a place to settle and pursue a livelihood. Virginia was the first settlement and it was huge. From New Jersey to Georgia, every colony had an Oxford founder or large landholder.

The British Crown brought the south into the Revolution in two ways:

• The Quebec Act of 1774, which threatened ownership of land.
• The emancipation declaration of Lord Dunmore, which threatened ownership of slaves.

The Quebec Act, 1774

Ownership of part of the Virginia territories was disputed by
New York. But neither colony was happy when George III
claimed title with the Quebec Act in 1774.

What brought many southern royalists in the south into the revolution was the threat to their land ownership. The Quebec Act essentially took territory north of the Ohio River away from Virginia (which had been the entire North American settlement and was still a huge colony) and the other 12 colonies and annexed them to Quebec, which was then seen as more loyal to the Crown.

George Washington and other Virginians had begun staking claims to these lands as early as 1753. Although they were in 1763 nominally marked as an Indian reserve, Virginia and other colonies had their eye on them for purposes of westward expansion.

George Washington, a surveyor by profession, was deeply aware of, and involved in, investments predicated on the Virginian colonial government or other colonies, allocating the lands in the territories that the Crown essentially now claimed for itself – looking to benefit from selling the land off and keeping the money. After joining the British troops in the colonies to defend British interests against the French and Indians, Washington was promoted to Colonel and served under General Braddock in the war in Pennsylvania. After his military service, Washington claimed 30,000 acres of prime agricultural land along the Kanawha and Ohio rivers west of the Appalachians. He obtained settlers and "indentured servants" to establish and utilize his properties.

North America according to George III.
This map didn't fly.

Whereas New Englanders may have been looking for a reason to fight, the other colonies were not as belligerent and not as fully committed to rebellion – until a major part of their assets was threatened by the Quebec Act. It is important to understand this because:

(1) Without appreciating the importance of this Act, the importance of the Boston Tea Party could be exaggerated. The Tea Party may have been a key event in the conversion of Yankee traders, but the taxation issue resonated mostly with New Englanders and possibly New Yorkers – not so much  southern plantation owners.

(2) Without fully understanding the investments that Virginian landowners in the southerly colonies had made in the Virginia territories that the Quebec Act confiscated, it is hard to understand why they joined the American Revolution with such enthusiasm. This point is made by Thomas D. Curtis.

George III said smugly to Lord North on February 4, 1774 when the Quebec Act was passed:

The die is now cast. The colonies must either submit or triumph. [Emphasis added.]

The colonies did not submit.

• They convened the First Continental Congress to consider united American resistance to the British. Massachusetts formed a shadow colonial government and established militias to resist the increasing British military presence.
• In April 1775, the British Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Gage, ordered British troops to march to Concord to seize a known arsenal of militia weapons. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington. The first shots of the American Revolution were fired there and soon after at Concord. The British regulars retreated back to Boston.

Lord Dunmore's Emancipation Proclamation, 1775

The Quebec Act was a major prod to Revolution from London. In November, the Governor of Virginia, the 4th Earl of Dunmore, added an extra push that might have been a crucial blow against the southern colonies. He offered emancipation to any slave of a rebel slaveholder who joined the Crown's troops. Hundreds of slaves managed to get through to Dunmore, although many were captured and suffered from the attempt.

George Washington was seriously worried about this move. But news of Dunmore's offer traveled fast not only to slaves but the slaveholders in surrounding states. Within days, 150 volunteers headed north from the Carolinas to Norfolk, playing a significant role in the defeat of Dunmore on December 9, 1775.

Dunmore's troops were driven back to their ship (the Otter) along with the surviving slaves. Smallpox killed a majority of the remaining slaves.

The Contrasting Issues of Liberty

To King George III, the rebel resistance was something to be crushed. Parliament supported him in disciplining its unruly colonial children, refusing to negotiate and instead hiring Hessian mercenaries  to beef up British troops.

To the colonies, it was at first a struggle for their rights as British citizens. The Continental Congress passed measures abolishing British authority in the colonies. But the Quebec Act and Dunmore's Emancipation Proclamation fired up the south.

When in January 1776 Thomas Paine published Common Sense, more than 500,000 copies were sold in a few months to colonials nursing their grievances. In the spring of 1776, the colonies one by one added their support to the call for independence.

The Continental Congress urged each colony to form their own governments and it created a five-man committee to draft a joint Declaration. The work was completed mostly by Virginian Thomas Jefferson, who drew on the writings of John Locke (Christ Church, Oxford) and others.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain. This call was added to the Declaration, and the committee signed off.  Two days later, on July 4, the Declaration was adopted by 12 colonies after minor revision. New York, the last of the 13 colonies, did not approve it until July 19, and not till August 2 was the last signature added.

In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain – with Oxonians on both sides of the table – the United States formally became a free and independent nation, although another war was required in 1812 to convince the British abandoned that they could bring the upstart country back under control when they wished.

Notes

The Curtis Thesis – Theory propounded by economist Thomas D. Curtis that Virginians and other southerners were largely motivated by interests in properties in the Virginia Territories in deciding ti join the colonies in the north in rebellion against George III. Ed Dodson has posted a lecture by Curtis on the subject.

The Revolution in Virginia – Lord Dunmore had the key to controlling the south by dividing slaves and slaveholders. He didn't count on the swift reaction of slaveholders in other states.

CLERIHEWS: Invented by an Oxonian (7 new ones here)

1. Edmund Clerihew Bentley,
Ever so gently,
Did what he had to do,
And invented the clerihew.

Edmund Clerihew Bentley was born in 1875 in London. He was an original thinker. His first mystery book was Trent's Last Case, published in 1913, in which the detective hero comes up with brilliant solutions to cases... that alas turn out to be wrong.

At 16 years of age at St. Paul's School, England, before going up to Merton College, Oxford, Bentley invented the "clerihew," a collection of which appears in his first book, Biography for Beginners (1905).

A clerihew is a potted biography. The orthodox form is two rhyming couplets, the first rhyme provided by the name of a famous person. The verse form was invented by Bentley and was picked up by G.K. Chesterton and W.H. Auden (who of course tried everything).

The clerihews most venerated are the shortest. The seven numbered clerihews are mine.  I am sometimes stumped for a rhyme to a name and I cheat by adding some words to the name in the first line, making it easier to find a rhyme.

2. The elder William Pitt,
Dreamt of empire, fully Brit.
The French at first he chased away,
But later they aided the USA.

3. George the Third
Liked tea taxes, absurd.
The colonies had a swift revolt.
What was he thinking? The dolt!

4. Frederick Lord North
Sent tax collectors forth.
Boston rebels made them swim.
How could he have been so dim?

5. George Washington thought that he was done.
When Yorktown got the Brits on the run.
But wise folk flew to his residence,
And begged him be first of our Presidents.

Here's one inspired by a comment last year from Wendell Fitzgerald (to whom I give a tip of the hat):

6. Henry George's plea
Was a tax, or a rental fee,
To cut tenants free
Of serfdom's poverty.

Here are classic examples.

The first-ever clerihew was written about Sir Humphry Davy by Bentley while at St. Paul's School.

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Here's another by Bentley:

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote Principles of Political Economy.

Auden's Literary Graffiti includes:

Sir Henry Rider Haggard
Was completely staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced, "I am She!"

A clerihew was written by the students of Sherborne School in England about their alumnus Alan Turing, the founder of computing. Turing was at King's College, Cambridge before going to Princeton University, attached to Einstein's Institute for Advanced International Studies, and then joining the Bletchley Park code-breaking group during World War II.

Turing
Must have been alluring
To get made a don
So early on.

To which I offer a petulant alternative:

7. Turing at Bletchley, says lore,
Broke Nazi code in the war.
But his nation looked away...
As he agonized for being gay.

A clerihew much appreciated by chemists is cited in Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes, and describes the inventor of the thermos bottle (or Dewar flask):

Sir James Dewar
Is smarter than you are -
None of you asses
Can liquefy gases.

In 1983, Games Magazine ran a contest titled "Do You Clerihew?" The winning entry was:
Did Descartes
Depart
With the thought
"Therefore I'm not"?

I have specialized in clerihews of children's book writers and illustrators. Feel free to use any of my clerihews but please acknowledge and inform me of each use (teppermarlin [at] aol [dot] com).

Oxford bios. More clerihews, about children's book writers. Other clerihews: Millay.

SLAVERY: American Colonies before 1776

Betty Wood explains the
 economic aspects of
slavery in the colonies. 

Slavery issue was a hot button in the American colonies in the years leading up to the American Revolution. It was a phenomenon of the southern states, those led by Oxonians, rather than of New England, which were colonized more by Cambridge alums.

Opposition to slavery in the last quarter of the 18th century was muted by a common need to oppose the Crown. This colonies were thereby unified long enough for the United States to be formed.

How did this evolve, and how were Oxford and Cambridge alumni involved?

Colonial Economics and Slavery

The Spanish and Portuguese colonies produced gold, silver and other valuable commodities like sugar for their colonial masters.

The same could not be said for the British colonies in the early years. The colonies were viewed as a place for emigrants from Britain to obtain the freedom that comes with land ownership. It was also a market for British goods, but this depended on the colonies generating their own export income, which took some time for them to do.

The mercantilist business model of the Spanish and Portuguese rulers depended heavily on slavery. The mines and single-crop agriculture (sugar and tropical fruits) depended on having a large work force of low-cost workers.

Initially, the British model was based on the idea that each emigrant would be given some land and Britain surplus population could be put to use on the free land in the New World. Oxonian James  Oglethorpe conceived his new colony of Georgia as a place where slavery would be outlawed and the work force would be made up of convicts or the overlapping category of poor British people (in those days, poverty was an offense; one could go to prison for not paying back debt).

But initial British settlements did not last and others felt threatened by the harsh winters, by native Indians who resisted the arrival of the settlers, by settlers from other countries like Spain coming north from  Florida, or from France coming south or east into New York.

Sugar plantations didn't fare so well in the new American colonies, but early on tobacco became a major cash crop. Then, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin made possible the harvesting of short-staple cotton and made cotton farming very profitable.

As tobacco and cotton farming grew, the value of slaves in working on the farms became more evident, and the American colonies began importing slaves. The profitable farms also made the colonies themselves more profitable, and the market in the South grew for goods from New England, the mid-Atlantic colonies and from the Mother Country. William Pitt decided that the American colonies were worth fighting over, and he sent an army to chase the French and unfriendly Indians out of the colonies, but left behind debts for his successors to pay for, setting up the dynamics for the American Revolution.

Secular and Religious Movements against Slavery

The movement against slavery came early on from evangelical ministers and Quaker preachers and later from rational philosophers concerned with human rights.

Baptists in the early colonies were often opposed to slavery. Chad Brown (c. 1600-1650), a Baptist minister who co-founded Providence with Roger Williams (alumnus of Pembroke College, Cambridge) was one of the first prominent abolitionists in the colonies.

Rationalist thinkers of the Scottish and English Enlightenment in the mid- to- late 18th century (David Hume died in 1776) criticized slavery for violating basic human rights.

The First Great Awakening in the 1730s and 1740s in the colonies produced movements against slavery, which was seen as un-Christian.

Quakers in North America and Great Britain became well known for their involvement in abolition. During the colonial era in America, it was common for Friends in British America to own slaves. During the early to mid-1700s a disquiet about this practice arose,  through the work of abolitionist Quakers in Philadelphia like Anthony Benezet and John Woolman. By the time of the American Revolution few Friends still owned slaves and Cambridge-educated abolitionists like William Wilberforce and William Pitt (the Younger) were opposing slavery in parliament.

Moses Brown was one of four Rhode Island brothers who, in 1764, organized and funded the tragic and fateful voyage of the slave ship named Sally. Moses Brown had a crisis of conscience and broke  from his three brothers, becoming an abolitionist and a Christian Quaker. The brothers co-founded the college that became Brown University. The family, active mainly in the Baptist community of Providence, was descended from Chad Brown. Brown's brother-in-law and business partner, Jabez Bowen, was a Yale graduate and notable Rhode Island political figure. Three years before the American Revolution broke out, Moses Brown freed the last of his slaves.

James Edward Oglethorpe (1696-1785), a graduate of Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was among the first to articulate the secular Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanistic grounds (until his influence waned), arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to pursue the cause after his death.

Granville Sharp was an attorney who helped defend the slave Somersett. The Somersett's Case in 1771 emancipated a slave who ran away from his master in England. It established the principle that a slave obtains freedom upon reaching Britain, which helped launch the British movement to abolish slavery that Wilberforce and others picked up after the Revolution.

Though anti-slavery sentiments were widespread and growing after the American Revolution, the new American states that used slave labor, including in the South of the United States, continued to do so.

Benjamin Franklin's Three Visits to England, 1724-1775

How did growing British opposition to slavery affect public opinion in the American colonies? One way was Benjamin Franklin, who made three pre-Revolutionary visits to England, lasting 18 years. He had increasing access to the political leadership. The following summary is based primarily on data from a Revolutionary War website:

On his first trip in 1724-26, Benjamin Franklin went to England when he was 18 to buy printing equipment that the Governor of the colony of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith, promised to pay for. But Governor Keith did not send to London the needed letter of credit. Franklin therefore worked for  the famed printing house of Samuel Palmer (and later with another famed printer, James Watts) to earn the fare to go back to Philadelphia. Franklin left London in 1726 with Thomas Denham, a Philadelphia shopkeeper who hired Franklin when they returned.

By the time of his second trip to England in 1757, Franklin had served in Pennsylvania as a city councilman, state assemblyman, and Deputy Postmaster General. Pennsylvania was formally owned by the Penn family, since a Royal Charter from Charles II was issued to William Penn in 1681, granting the land to him and his heirs. The colony had a democratic legislature but the Penn family could override it. Conflicts developed over the years between the state Assembly and the Penn family. In 1757, the Pennsylvania Assembly hired Ben Franklin to represent before George II their concerns about the Penn family's arbitrary authority and its exemption from taxes. Franklin was in England for five years but failed in his mission, leaving London in 1762.

Franklin's last and longest trip occurred at the behest of the Pennsylvania Assembly within two years after he returned. The legislature was outraged by George III's Sugar Act, his proposed Stamp Act and other laws initiated by George III's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend. Franklin sailed in 1764 to represent Pennsylvania's interests before the King. He was in England until 1775, later representing other colonies - Massachusetts, New Jersey and Georgia.

Benjamin Franklin used some ingenuity in making the colonies' case in England. For example, he argued that slavery in the colonies was different from slavery in the Caribbean islands and in Brazil, on the basis (among other differences) that slaves in the colonies were allowed to have families. Franklin saw in London the belligerence of the British lawmakers and came to the view that  diplomacy was not going to solve the colonies' problem with the King. He left London in March 1775 and arrived in Philadelphia on May 5. The next day he was elected by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

Slave traders. Benjamin Franklin argued that slavery in
the West Indies was immoral, but was not such a problem
in the American mainland colonies. Anti-slavery themes
were applied to the relations between the colonies and Britain.

The Growth of Slavery in the American Colonies

Whatever the progress of ideas in opposition to slavery in the American colonies, the fact is that  an estimated 12 million slaves were brought from Africa to the Americas during the most active decades of the slave trade.

During that entire period, a relatively small fraction, about 287,000 slaves were brought to the North American colonies - only 2.4 percent of all the slaves. Most of the 11.7 million other slaves were sold in the Caribbean Islands and Brazil, where they had a shorter life expectancy because they tended to be worked harder and they had no family life. The slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil were said to be in need, in the blind language of the time, of being "replenished".

Although conditions of slaves in the American colonies were terrible, the weather was not as brutal as in the Caribbean and slaves were at least in homes and on farms with a place to live, and often were allowed to have children. Consequently their life expectancy was reportedly higher than most other parts of the continent where slavery existed.

The importation of slaves into the colonies peaked in the decade before the American Revolution. In the 17th century, the colonies imported 21,000 slaves. In the 18th century up to 1760, 189,000 slaves were imported. In the 1760s, another 63,000. In the 1770s, another 15,000.

Benjamin Franklin's Changing Views on Slavery

Franklin himself was a runaway, from a despotic brother and father and the contract that they signed with him binding him to work for them. Yet Franklin relied on slave labor at home and in his business. His newspaper relied heavily on advertising from slave auctioneers and from slaveowners pursuing runaways. This is all in David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery and the American Revolution (Hill and Wang, division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).

After the Revolution, historians give great credit to the abolitionists who, in due course, stirred up emotions on both sides that precipitated the Civil War. Benjamin Franklin is counted among these abolitionists.

But before the Revolution, Franklin was much less activist on the subject of slavery within the United States. He was based in England for 16 of the 18 years before the Revolution! Antagonism toward slaveowners emerged on the secular side for reasons unrelated to Enlightenment views on human rights. The 1764 revenue tax on French and Dutch sugar benefited British plantation owners. They were able to raise their prices at the expense of people living in the mainland American colonies. At the time, the British Parliament considered the West Indies a far more profitable part of the world for them than the mainland colonies, and the objections of the mainlanders, represented in England by Franklin among others, did not get much of a hearing.

The reaction back home in the colonies was one of outrage at both Parliament and the "nabob" plantation owners in the West Indies. One form it took was opposition to slavery - opposition to slavery in the plantations and opposition to the slavery of the colonies to the mother country. But it did not mean questioning the existence of slavery in the colonies, where the concentration of power and money was not as great as in the West Indies and where the colonies agreed to disagree on issues like slavery because they wanted to be united against the Crown.

Franklin and other leaders in the colonies - Steven Hopkins, Governor of Rhode Island, and James Otis, Jr. - a Harvard-educated writer who pushed the anti-slavery arguments to the extreme - painted a picture of all residents of the colonies being slaves to the British crown and Parliament.

The Revolutionary spirit did not precede the antislavery argument, as has often been taught. Instead, the Revolution can be said to have emerged from taking antislavery arguments applied to the wealthy British West Indies slaveowners and applying them to the relations between the colonies and the mother country.  (Waldstreicher, pp. 177-179.)

So the pre-Revolutionary colonies were antislavery relative to the West Indies, their leaders took the view that "slaves, or their labor, was unimportant in mainland America" (Waldstreicher, p. 180). Their sugar slavers were evil, whereas the colonies were slaveowners in some kind of moderation, and were okay.

Benjamin Franklin maintained a dialog on slavery issues in Britain with David Hume, William Pitt the Elder (Trinity, Oxford), Lord Mansfield (Christ Church, Oxford), Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Hillsborough (who maintained a hard line against the colonies after the Townshend Acts), Scottish poet William Knox and Samuel Johnson (Pembroke, Oxford).

Franklin is described as being "downright crafty" in making the case for the innocence of the American colonies. In England, Franklin shifted his focus on the labor of the American colonies to the importance of the land in contributing to British welfare, while insisting that Americans "are not, never were, nor ever will be [Britain's] slaves."

Franklin was supported by Pitt the Elder, who in retirement opposed the taxes and echoed Franklin's argument that the American colonists  were not slaves of the British. Pitt was a hero to Americans because when he was Prime Minister his soldiers had chased the French and their Indian allies from the colonies during the Seven Years ("French and Indian") War; Pittsburgh is named after him - it was formerly the French stronghold of Fort Duquesne.

Two Oxonians Created the USA, Pitt and North (Superseded)

Borneman's "The French and Indian
War" places it in the context of the
struggles for power in Europe.

The content of the following book review has been abbreviated and utilized in the following post:

http://ox-cam-nyc.blogspot.com/2013/10/oxonians-at-odds-pitt-north-and.html

For the writer's purposes the post has been superseded, but the original review is being retained for those who have linked to it or who are interested in knowing more about the French and Indian War or Borneman's book on the subject.

***

During the past two weeks in the Florida sun, I found a book to read that I recommend highly to anyone interested in the origins of the British Empire and the United States of America.

Walter Borneman's 2006 book, published by HarperCollins, shows how the British managed to drive the French out of North America - and along with them, eventually, the Spanish and the Native Americans whom they called Indians - and yet created animosities that led to the booting of the Brits from 13 of the colonies. (King George III kept control of Quebec.)

Two Oxonians, William Pitt the Elder (the "Great Commoner" who later became earl of Chatham) and Frederick North (2nd earl of Guilford), have their names attached to many places in the United States, even though neither one set foot on the American Continent.

Pittsburgh, Penn., for example, and Pittsfield, Mass., and Guilford, Conn. And North Dakota (just kidding).

Both Pitt and North attended Trinity College, Oxford but they are judged very differently by history. Pitt was a passionate strategist for the successful creation of the British Empire during the Seven Years War in Europe. North was a passionate ally of George III in trying to put the American colonies in their place.

Pitt made possible the independence of the American colonies. So long as the French were a threat, the colonies were dependent on the British military to defend them.

The outcome of independence would not have bothered Pitt himself. He was a fierce devotee of the colonies and vigorously opposed the Stamp Act in 1766 ("The Americans are the sons, not the bastards of England.), argued for removing British troops from Boston and deplored the attitude toward the colonies of Lord North. Pitt wished not long before his death that he were ten years younger so that he could

spend the remainder of my days in America, which has already given the most brilliant proofs of its independent spirit. (Borneman, p. 305, citing J. C. Long's 1940 book on Pitt.)

Borneman, who lives in Colorado, has previously written about the War of 1812. He shows that George II was wrapped up in keeping his "prized possession," Hanover. The king sent his "most treasured son", the duke of Cumberland, to defend Hanover, but the duke was surrounded by the French at Hastenbeck in Germany, and was forced to surrender Hanover to the French. Cumberland escaped with the help of Colonel Jeffrey Amherst, and on his return to Britain "resigned his military offices in disgrace".

Borneman provides highly readable summaries of the different battles in North American, showing how the outcome of these battles hinged on the strategic sense of commanders, and the importance of sometimes small numbers of savvy soldiers. He portrays Pontiac as an able military commander but questions how important he was as a leader of the Iroquois or other tribes. At numerous points he suggests that the early allegiance of different tribes to the British was based on lavish gifts, and to the French was based on the comfortable laissez-faire relationship that the French had with their Indian allies.

What the British had going for them is that they brought their women with them and built families. They increased and multiplied. The French came as traders and went home. The imbalance of population meant that the British were favored in the contest between British and French.

In the end, the French and Indian wars - the Seven Years War - left Europe pretty much the way it started. But it made Britain lord of North America, established the British Navy as preeminent, and created bases for the British - for example, in India - that became the cornerstones of the British Empire. Pitt, and not George II, understood what was going to be important in the decades ahead.

The problem for the British after the dust settled is that the wars were costly and had to paid for and, many thought, why not make the colonies pay for their own defense?  The Stamp Act imposed duties on imported goods. To which Benjamin Franklin suggested that the new fashion would be "to wear their old clothes over again." Pitt in 1766 succeeded in having it repealed. The Quartering Act billeted British soldiers on the homes of American colonists and the New York legislature voted to nullify it. The British were "aghast".

George III was "contemptuous" of the colonials. Pitt's chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townsend, seeing Pitt ailing, moved ahead to do the king's bidding and imposed new taxes on imports into the colonies of glass, lead, paints, paper and... tea.

The last straw were the "Intolerable Acts", of which the Quebec Act of 1774 appears to Borneman as the most significant. It granted territory north of the Ohio river to the British colony at Quebec. George Washington had claimed these lands for Virginia in 1753 and in 1763 they were nominally marked as an Indian reserve, while several states had their eye on them for purposes of westward expansion.  The Acts also enacted reprisals for the dumping of tea in Boston Harbor.

All this came to a head on April 18, in 1775, when two lanterns were hung in the steeple of Boston's old North Church and their beams sent messengers riding toward Lexington and Concord.

This is a fascinating book and its 400 pages read like a thriller.

OXFORD IN AMERICA 3: Making Independence Inevitable

Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford, Tory Prime Minister
 (1770-1782). "Disastrous." But the Tea Act of 1773  was
a bipartisan mistake. Photo by JTMarlin.

The painting of Frederick North, Earl of Guilford, hangs on the same wall in Trinity College, Oxford as those of the College Founder and Pitt the Elder. But while Pitt is viewed by history as a model executor of foreign policy, Lord North is ranked at the other end of the spectrum.

Pitt captured what became Canada from the French. North lost what became the USA to the colonists.

Sir Arthur Norrington, former President of Trinity and then Oxford's Vice Chancellor, said to me once: "Pity about Lord North. We could have made so much money from America."

The official site of the British Prime Minister’s Office doesn’t mince any words in summarizing North’s 12 years as Prime Minister: 

Best known as the man who lost Britain’s American colonies, Lord North served for a disastrous twelve years as prime minister.  A hard-working and sound administrator, North had served in the governments of Newcastle and Chatham, rising to the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

Boreas, god of the north wind.

The clever nickname his colleagues gave Lord North was Βορεας (“Boreas”, the winged Greek god of the north wind, pronounced BORE-ee-ass).

Horace Walpole in his memoirs describes North's appearance and déshabille in gross terms, but then admits to his having significant administrative talents. In a peacetime era he might have been a greater success.

The entry for Lord North in the Dictionary of National Biography is sympathetic. For example: (1) Lord North was a highly competent Chancellor of the Exchequer, (2) He did not want the Prime Minister job, did not use the title and asked his family not to use it, and (3) The need for the infamous tea tax was bequeathed to him by Grafton's administration. 

Taking office at the end of the long period of anti-monarchical Whig dominance going back to Lord Stanhope and Robert Walpole, North led the Tory allies of King George III in the Parliament. George III liked North's middle-of-the road policies and dragooned him into forming a government in 1770 after the Duke of Grafton was blamed for France's annexing Corsica and the Whig era ended. Ironically, Grafton was opposed to all of the five Townshend taxes on the colonies, but was outvoted by his own party on the threepenny-per-pound "peppercorn" tax on tea, because the income was needed to pay British officers in the colonies; so North's Tea Act of 1773 was bipartisan in origin.

The taxation issue was for neither side about the money - it was primarily a test of the power of Parliament and the King. North  overplayed Britain's hand to enforce the tax and led it into the War of Independence, with the backing  of George III. North made errors that led to serious British losses at Saratoga in 1777. Opinion began to turn in 1778 and after Britain's defeat at Yorktown in 1781 North exclaimed "It's all over." George III would not let him resign till the war effectively ended and Parliament voted no confidence in North in 1782.


Whereas Pitt the Elder has many places named after him in the United States, to my knowledge North had none - neither North Carolina nor North Dakota is named after him. However, Guilford County, NC is named after North's father, the 1st Earl of Guilford, who was also a Trinity College, Oxford alumnus. The seat of Guilford County is Greensboro, NC.

The present alumni relations officer at Trinity College, Oxford is related to North - his gggrandmother was North's great-niece.

Lord North's co-conspirator in the runup to the Tea Act was Charles Townsend, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the short Prime Ministership of Lord Chatham. He was educated at the University of Leiden and reportedly at Oxford, although he does not appear in the standard alumni list. According to his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography:

...[in May 1787] he introduced his measures for dealing with America. The legislative functions of the New York assembly were to be suspended; commissioners of customs were to be established in America to superintend the execution of the laws relating to trade; and a port duty was imposed on glass, red and white lead, painters' colours, paper, and tea. The Americans received the news of these proposals with a burst of fury; anti-importation associations were formed, riots broke out, and the loyalist officials were reduced to impotence. Townshend did not live to see these developments. ... [O]n 4 Sept. he died, at the premature age of forty-two, ‘of a neglected fever.’ Townshend was one of those statesmen whose abilities are the misfortune of the country they serve. He impressed his contemporaries as a man of unrivalled brilliance, yet to obtain a paltry revenue of 40,000 shillings he entered a path which led to the dismemberment of the empire.