y of
Pontiac was the desperate attempt of the Indian allies of France to
annihilate the colonists by a concerted attack of a vast union of
tribes. The conspiracy failed after a bloody war that lasted for
nearly two years. Pontiac, the Indian chief who had helped to destroy
Braddock, and who had dreamed that all the English might as easily be
destroyed, was defeated and killed; his league was dissipated, and the
power of the red men as a united force broken for good. Under such
conditions of immunity from long-standing and pressing perils, due in
the main to the triumph of British arms, the colonists might very well
have been expected to regard with especial favor their association with
England. If there had been differences between the two countries for
long enough, no moment could have been apter for the adoption of a
policy calculated to lessen and ultimately to abolish those differences
than the moment when the weary and wearing Seven Years' War came to its
close. A far-seeing monarch, advised and encouraged by far-seeing
statesmen, might have soldered close the seeming impossibilities and
made them kiss. Had the throne even been filled by a sovereign
slightly less stubborn, had the throne been surrounded by servants
slightly less bigoted, the arrogant patronage of the one part and the
aggressive protestation of the other part might have been judiciously
softened into a relationship wisely paternal and loyally filial. The
advantage of an enduring union between the mother country and her
colonies was obvious to any reasonable observer. A common blood, a
common tongue, a common pride of race and common interests should have
kept them together. But the relations were not amicable. The colonies
were peopled by men who were proud indeed of being Englishmen, but by
reason of that very pride were jealous of any domination, even at the
hands of Englishmen. The mother country, on the other hand, regarded
the colonies, won with English hands and watered with English blood, as
being no less portion and parcel of English soil because three thousand
miles of stormy ocean lay between the port upon the Severn and the port
upon {80} the Charles River. She came to regard as mere ingratitude
those assertions of independence which most characteristically proved
the colonies to be worthy of it and of her. The theory of the absolute
dominion of England over the American colonies might have died a
natural death, a harmonious s