art of the colonies, but found them
disposed to give me and my arguments a hostile and contemptuous, instead
of a cordial reception. These gentlemen may be considered as the
representatives of the great body of thinking men of this country." In
the note of Sparks are embodied the recollections of Madison, Jay, and
others, and the contemporary statements of Franklin and Penn. They are
in harmony with the statements and quotations in the text, and sustain
the judgment of Dr. Ramsay (History of South Carolina, Vol. I., p. 164),
who says: "Till the rejection of the second petition of Congress, the
reconciliation with the mother country was the unanimous wish of the
Americans generally."[372]

When Washington heard of the affair of Concord and Lexington, April 19,
1775, he wrote, in his own quiet residence at Mount Vernon, "Unhappy is
it to reflect that a brother's sword should be sheathed in a brother's
breast, and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are to be
either drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But,
can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?" Mr. Bancroft says: "The
reply to Bunker Hill from England reached Washington before the end of
September (1775); and the manifest determination of the Ministers to
push the war by sea and land, with the utmost vigour, removed from his
mind every doubt of the necessity of independence. Such also was the
conclusion of Greene; and the army was impatient when any of the
chaplains prayed for the King."[373]

It was thus that King George the Third, by his own acts, lost the
confidence and affection of his loyal subjects in America, and hastened
a catastrophe of which he had been repeatedly and faithfully warned, and
which none deprecated more generally and earnestly than the leaders and
inhabitants of the American colonies; but who determined, and openly
declared their determination in every petition to the King and
Parliament for ten years, that, if necessary, at all hazards, they would
maintain and defend their constitutional rights as Englishmen.

Now, at the close of the year 1775, and before entering upon the
eventful year of 1776, when the American colonies adopted the
Declaration of Independence, let us recapitulate the events which thus
brought the mother country and her colonial offspring face to face in
armed hostility.

1. No loyalty and affection could be more cordial than that of the
American colonies to England at the conquest