John Hamilton Quotes

Most Canadians supported the English despite the letter.

1st Earl of Chatham. The speech was given in the midst of the American Revolution.

Of the 13 colonies, the 3 Middle Atlantic States, were the least enthusiastic about an armed revolution against England. Jersey—Now New Jersey—was the most recalcitrant then with Benjamin Franklin’s son as Governor. See {634108} for an explanation of why that was.

See {636935}for the policy decision that triggered this order.

Fox was one of the opposition leaders who were opposed to the heavy handed policies that the British King and Government had used.

2nd Earl of Guilford. Britain had a double standard of how they would fight wars and battles. If the contention was a rebellion, more mild military means would be used. But if a foreign war, they would use all means. For example, the use of mercenaries would not be used in most rebellions. With this letter, Lord North was escalating the American Revolution into a “foreign war”. As a result, not only would mercenaries be used, but so would Indian allies whose mode of war was not as restrained as the British troops. It also allowed for emancipating slaves and inviting them to take up arms. With this quotation, the American Revolution was raised to a new and more serious military level. See {634115} for the instructions to implement this policy.

Earlier, his father had also castigated the ministers over their inept hard-line handling of the American Revolution. See {641505} .

Clark’s men had English Colonel Hamilton under siege by making him think there were many more Americans in Clarks army than the real 180 or so. He tried to get Hamilton to surrender by threatening if they had to take the fort they would treat Hamilton and the British as murderers—Hamilton had paid hostile Indians for American scalps. At that point a party of Clark’s men arrived with 4 or 5 Indian prisoners who had been captured raiding
civilian farms. After the Indians were executed, Hamilton agreed to surrender.

Americans were by no means united in wanting to take up arms against Britain. Relatively few of the loyalist quotations have come down to us, but here is one. It also illustrates why some Americans wanted complete independence: So that they could escape their debts to English merchants. Most however had more noble and unselfish motives. As a matter of fact, the American Revolution is unusual in the sense that there were so many men of substance who sacrificed much of their material wealth for the American ideal. There were also the rogues and opportunists as Galloway describes.

He was acting as French Foreign Secretary at the time.

This was written more than a year before the American Revolution Battles began. It took time to ship the men and supplies to America and the British did not handle that task with much efficiency. See {636926} for another of the King’s statements.

While the official battles of the American Revolution did not begin until 1776, parts of the American colonies were in a de facto state of rebellion and the British could not enforce their laws. See {636925} for another of the King’s statements.

American history as several instances in which America wanted to invade Canada and add territory to the United States. See {636940}. This was the first.

One of the very poorly executed military maneuvers of the American Revolution was the failed patriot attempt to invade Canada and take Quebec. The Generals assigned to lead the invasion made a host of blunders. When things were not going well, they asked for Benedict Arnold to come and reinforce them. However, they asked for help too late as Arnold explained to George Washington. The reason they wanted Arnold was that at the early part of the American Revolution he was one of the two best field commanders the Patriots had. Soon after, he led the successful battle of Saratoga, but his Commander did not give him any informal or official credit. Arnold felt that he was not properly recognized for his many military achievements and that appears to be true. However, with that mental predisposition, he gave in to venal motives and went over to the British side—the only senior officer who committed treason in the Revolution.

The “Defenders” were the Catholic terrorists who along with their Protestant Orange Order counterpart were in sporadic acts of violence and terrorism with no military objective. The French Army was not to sail for Ireland where they would link up with The Defenders and take Ireland from the English. The invasion failed when terrible weather forced the French troop ships carrying more than 45,000 invading soldiers to cut their anchor cables and return to France.

The professor did not agree with these reasons and took the position that England was foolish in their use of military force. However, in America we rarely hear the English side of the dispute that led to war between England and her American colonies.

Washington was describing the British strategy at the start of the war. The expectation was not only that of the British high command in America but was the prevailing expectation in the Court, Parliament, and the media in London. British critics of the military strategy point to this as a key reason the British lost the war in the end. Instead of waiting for the American troops to fall apart during the hard winter and gain a cheap and easy victory, the critics argue that the British should have initiated full scale attacks on the weakened and ill provisioned American soldiers.

Mackenzie was a British officer with whom Washington had become friends in the French & Indian War and in this letter, Washington was trying to explain the seriousness of the Boston rebellion for Britain.