American War 'most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, utnjust'

[bpilgrim]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pitt_william.shtml">spoken by William Pitt (the Younger) (1759 - 1806)

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

CHAPTER XV.

YORKTOWN.

by John Fiske

On the very same day tht Cornwallis surrendered, Sir Henry Clinton, having received naval reinforcements, sailed from New York with twenty-five ships-of-the-line and ten frigates and 7,000 of his best troops. Five days brought him to the mouth of the Chesapeake, where he learned that he was too late, as had been the case four years before, when he tried to relieve Burgoyne.

...

How much longer the war might have dragged out its tedious length, or what might have been its final issue, without this timely assistance, can never be known; and our debt of gratitude to France for her aid on this supreme occasion is something which cannot be too heartily acknowledged.

Early on a dark morning of the fourth week in October, an honest old German, slowly pacing the streets of Philadelphia on his night watch, began shouting, "Basht dre o'glock, und Gornvallis ish dakendt!" and light sleepers sprant out of bed and threw up their windows. Washington's courier laid the dispatches before Congress in the forenoon, and after dinner a service of prayer and thanksgiving was held in the Lutheran Church. At New Haven and Cambridge the students sang triumphal hymns and every village green in the country was ablaze with bonfires. The Duke de Lauzun sailed for France in a swift ship, and on the 27th of November all the houses in Paris were illuminated and the aisles of Notre Dame resounded with the Te Deum. At noon of November 25, the news was brought to Lord George Germaine, at his house in Pall Mall. Getting into a cab, he drove hastily to the Lord Chancellor's house in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, and took him in; and then they drove to Lord North's office in Downing Street. At the staggering news, all the Prime Minister's wonted gayety forsook him. He walked wildly up and down the room, throwing his arms about and cryng, "O God! it is all over! it is all over! it is all over!" A dispatch was sent to the king at Kew and when Lord George received the answerthat evening at dinner, he observed that his Majesty wrote calmly, but had forgotten to date his letter, - a thing which had never happened before.

"The tidings," says Wraxall, who narrates these incidents, "were calculated to diffuse a gloom over the most convivial society, and opened a wide field for political speculation." There were many people in England, however, who looked at the matter differently from Lord North. This crushing defeat was just what the Duke of Richmond, at the beginning of the war, had publicly declared he hoped for. Charles Fox always took especial delight in reading about the defeats of invading armies, from Marathon and Salamis downward; and over the news of Cornwallis's surrender he leaped from his chair and clapped his hands. In a debate in Parliament, four months before, the youth-ful Pitt had denounced the American war as "most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, un-natural, unjust and diabolical," which led Burke to observe, "He is not a chip of the old block; he is the old block itself."

source...
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/revwar/book2/chap15.html

deja vu

Happy Memorial Day :toast:

peace

[pnorman]

1. That URL cited, is a FANTASTIC source for American History!

THANKS! I just passed it onto my union venues. and have bookmarked it myself. Here it is, stripped back a bit: http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/revwar/

pnorman

[bpilgrim]

2. thanks for the shorter url

:toast:

peace