nah in July, and Charleston in December, 1782. In New York Clinton awaited the result of peace negotiations, which were already begun. The King THE TREATY OF PEACE The surrender of Cornwallis broke the English resistance. Before it occurred, the English nation was tired of a war which only accumulated debt without winning victories. March 5, 1782, parliament passed a bill to enable the king to make peace. Beaten. Fifteen days later Lord North resigned, and the whigs, under the leadership of Rockingham, formed a new ministry, with the understanding that American independence should be acknowledged. It was a bitter pill for the king, whose plans for a personally directed ministry was staked on the issue of the war. That he had lost was the only grain of comfort a discerning Englishman could find in the situation. In July, Rockingham died and Shelburne became prime minister, but the policy of peace was not changed. missioners. After some preliminary inquiries in reference to the terms likely to be demanded, negotiations began at Paris in the summer of 1782. To Franklin, our minister to France, were added, as AmeriPeace Com- can negotiators, John Jay, who for a long time had been fruitlessly seeking to induce Spain to become an ally of the United States; John Adams, minister to Holland; and Henry Laurens, a prisoner in England until the negotiations were nearly completed. Great Britain was represented by Oswald, a Scotch merchant who was in close communication with Shelburne. The American commissioners were instructed to proceed in open coöperation with France, but Jay satisfied himself that Vergennes, Separate with directing the policy of France, would sacrifice the interests of the United States, and he began to favor a separate treaty with England. Personally, Vergennes seems to have been disinterested, but he was under obligations to Spain, who feared to enhance the power of the new republic in the West. In September came from him an informal proposition that the region south of the Ohio be set aside for the Indians, part of it under the protection of Spain and part under that of the United States. At the same time it was intimated that at the conclusion of peace, France would support England's claim to the territory north of the Ohio. This scheme, if adopted, would leave the United States merely a seacoast power. If it should come before a conference composed of all the parties to the war, it could not fail to have the support of Spain and England, and, with France's additional advocacy, must be adopted. Franklin trusted Vergennes, but the facts of the case, ably set forth by Jay, induced him to consent to make a separate arrangement with England, which was pointedly against the instructions of the American commissioners. An intermediary was sent to TERMS OF THE TREATY 215 England, where the ministry, glad to settle the difficulty with one power so that they might be the more free to deal with the others, fell in with the suggestion, and on that basis negotiations proceeded smoothly. Vergennes's conduct has occasioned much discussion. Some persons have supposed that he wished to keep America dependent on France, others that he acted in good faith and was unjustly suspected by Jay and Adams. He undoubtedly hoped that Vergennes's Louisiana would some day come back to France, and this Conduct. fact has suggested that he wished to keep the United States out of the Mississippi Valley in order that it might be more easily secured by France. The theory, however, does not explain why he should have been willing to enhance the power of England in the northern part of the valley. Probably the most acceptable explanation is that he cared little about the disposition of the interior, and merely accepted the proposed arrangement to please Spain, to whose interest alone it was that England should have the Northwest; Vergennes's indifference in the matter is shown by his calm acquiescence when in December he learned from Franklin that the American commissioners, on November 30, had concluded a separate treaty with England to be effective when peace should have been made between France and England. Terms of the Treaty. Boundaries. This treaty, after recognizing the independence of the United States. dealt with four principal heads, each of which had been fully discussed. The boundary was all we could have desired. On the northeast it ran up the St. Croix river to the source, north to the highlands separating the tributaries of the St. Lawrence from the streams flowing into the Atlantic, thence with the highlands to the forty-fifth parallel, and along that to the St. Lawrence. It was then to pass along the middle of rivers and lakes to the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods and thence due west to the Mississippi, down which it went to the thirty-first parallel and along that to the Chattahoochee, thence southward to the source of the Flint, whence it ran in a straight line to the mouth of the St. Mary's, and thence to the Atlantic. The British posts within this line were to be given up as soon as possible. A secret clause provided that if in the general peace England retained West Florida, its northern boundary should be a line from the mouth of the Yazoo east to the Appalachicola. The navigation of the Mississippi was to be open to both nations. No arrangements. were made for running the boundary line, and as geographical knowledge was then imperfect, trouble occurred when the succeeding genera tion came to interpret that part of the treaty which referred to the northeastern and the northwestern boundaries. The Americans were anxious that the New Englanders should continue to have their former facilities in the fisheries, and after much The difficulty it was agreed that the Americans might fish on the Banks of Newfoundland and wherever else they had been in the habit of fishing, and that they might land and cure fish in any uninhabited parts of Nova Scotia, Labrador, and the Magdalen Islands, but not in Newfoundland. For this concession, so important to New England, Adams's pertinacity was chiefly responsible. On boundaries and fisheries, the treaty thus favored the United States. On the two other important points of discussion, the pay British ment of British debts and compensation of the loyalists it ought, thought the British commissioners, to favor England. But their contention was vigorously resisted. Franklin thought the debts were properly canceled, because parliament, by closing the American ports and inflicting the horrors of war, had destroyed the power of the debtors to pay these obligations. Adams and Jay were anxious to preserve the credit of Americans, and the demands of the British were accepted, at least negatively. It was agreed that no legal impediment should be placed in the way of the payment of any debts owed by American to British subjects. As to compensating the loyalists, the commissioners held out a long time. King and ministers were insistent; for they believed that England was in honor bound to succor those whose fortunes had been seized because they were true to the crown. The Americans were equally unyielding, because they looked on the loyalists as wicked conspirators, authors of much bloodshed, and proper victims of the popular wrath. In one of the discussions of the subject, the American commissioners said that congress could not order a state to repeal its confiscation laws, and that the limit of its authority was to recommend a repeal. The English commissioners, anxious to close the negotiations, caught at this expression, and it was agreed that congress would make the desired recommendation. The result was a double interpretation. Englishmen, under the necessity of defending the treaty, assured the public that the advice of congress would be received by the states as binding. The American commissioners authorized no such impression. When, as later happened, the states paid no attention to the advice of congress, the British public charged the United States with breach of faith. When this preliminary treaty was announced in parliament, there was an outburst of anger which produced a change of ministry. Hartley was sent to Paris to replace Oswald, and he was ordered to make better terms. He did his best, but the American commissioners would not give more than they had already promised, and September 3, 1783, when a general peace was signed by all parties to the war, the treaty completed on November 30, 1782, was accepted as defining the political relations between England and her former colonies. It did not deal with commercial matters, a subject reserved for much irritating discussion in the future. A General |