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Defects in the Commissary department.... Distress of the army at Valley Forge.... The army subsisted by impressments.... Combination in congress against General Washington.... Correspondence between him and General Gates.... Distress of the army for clothes.... Washington's exertions to augment the army.... Congress sends a committee to camp.... Attempt to surprise Captain Lee.... Congress determines on a second expedition to Canada.... Abandons it.... General Conway resigns.... The Baron Steuben appointed Inspector General.... Congress forbids the embarkation of Burgoyne's army.... Plan of reconciliation agreed to in Parliament.... Communicated to congress and rejected.... Information of treaties between France and the United States.... Great Britain declares war against France.... The treaties with France ratified by congress.... Complaints of the treatment of prisoners.... A partial exchange agreed to.
All this time, moreover, reparation for the Chesapeake affair was blocked, since it had been coupled with a demand for the renunciation of impressments, something that no British Ministry would have dared to yield. On the part of Napoleon, the Non-intercourse Act offered another opportunity for plunder.
To the Senate of the United States: I transmit to the Senate copies and extracts of documents in the archives of the Department of State falling within the purview of their resolution of the 4th instant, on the subject of British impressments from American vessels. The information, though voluminous, might have been enlarged with more time for research and preparation.
The whole structure of blockades, Orders in Council, seizures, and restrictions upon neutrals vanished; the necessity for British impressments ceased to exist; and, since France never again came into hostility with England, none of these grievances were revived.
The Secretary of War, the financier, Robert Morris, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Robert R. Livingston, assisted at these deliberations, and the business was concluded with unusual celerity. A revenue was scarcely less necessary than an army, and it was obvious that the means for carrying on the war must be obtained either by impressments or by a vigorous course of taxation.
Before hostilities had fairly begun, notice was sent to the American government: it insisted on prosecuting the war, which was therefore undertaken ostensibly for the protection of the coast and the prevention of impressments. In every respect except in the numbers available for land operations the Americans seemed inferior to the English.
Holden stated his platform in the organ of his party "If the people of North Carolina are for perpetual conscriptions, impressments and seizures to keep up a perpetual, devastating and exhausting war, let them vote for Governor Vance, for he is for`fighting it out now; but if they believe, from the bitter experience of the last three years, that the sword can never end it, and are in favor of steps being taken by the State to urge negotiations by the general government for an honorable and speedy peace, they must vote for Mr.
Although a repeal of the orders susceptible of explanations meeting the views of this Government had taken place before this pacific advance was communicated to that of Great Britain, the advance was declined from an avowed repugnance to a suspension of the practice of impressments during the armistice, and without any intimation that the arrangement proposed with regard to sea men would be accepted.
The governors of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, whose orders forbade their assent to a farther emission of bills of credit, departed from their instructions to promote this favourite project; the people submitted to impressments of their property; and a mild winter gave no interruption to their warlike preparations.
While it was not reasonably to be expected that any British Ministry would throw over the traditional naval policy of impressments or venture to run directly counter to shipping interests, it was open to anticipation that some such compromise as the Jay treaty might be agreed upon, which would relieve the United States from arbitrary exactions during the European war.
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