compelled their
evacuation of the city of Boston. In the Southern States they had routed
the English forces, and had compelled the Governors of Virginia and
South and North Carolina to take refuge on board of English men-of-war.
Before the declaration of independence, the colonists fought with the
enthusiasm of Englishmen for Englishmen's rights, and the British
soldiers fought without heart against their fellow-subjects contending
for what many of both the soldiers and officers knew to be rights dear
to all true Englishmen; but when the Congress of the American colonies
declared themselves to be no longer Englishmen, no longer supporters of
the constitutional rights of Englishmen, but separationists from
England, and seeking alliance with the enemies of England, then the
English army felt that they were fighting against enemies and not
fellow-subjects, and fought with an energy and courage which carried
disaster, in almost every instance, to the heretofore united but now
divided colonists, until France and Spain came to their assistance.

With these preliminary and general remarks, we proceed to state more
specifically the grounds on which we regard, as a calamity to the
interests of true liberty and of civilization, the change of position,
policy, and principles avowed by the General Congress in the Declaration
of Independence, 1776.

I. The Declaration of Independence was a renunciation of all the
principles on which the General Congress, Provincial Legislatures, and
Conventions professed to act from the beginning of the contest. The
foregoing pages present abundant testimony and illustration how
earnestly, how constantly, how unanimously the American colonists
expressed their attachment to the mother country and to the principles
of the British Constitution--how indignantly they repelled, as an insult
and a slander, every suspicion and statement that they meditated or
desired _independence_, or that they would ever consent to sever the
ties of their connection with the mother country and the glorious
principles of her constitution of government.

In the same Congress of 1775, by which Washington was appointed
Commander-in-Chief, the higher departments of the army were organized.
Bills of credit to the amount of three millions were emitted to defray
the expenses of the war, and after the battles of Lexington and Bunker's
Hill, while the English army were shut in Boston by the Provincial
volunteers, a declaration