19I2-] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 57 



It is interesting in this connection to remember that Charles 

 Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress during the 

 Revolution, wrote a history of that event; and his position and 

 acquaintance with leading characters must certainly have given him 

 valuable information. But he burnt the manuscript, giving as a 

 reason that its publication would give too much offense to persons 

 still living. He wished to quiet down everything, forget the horrible 

 scenes, controversies and factions, and build up the country. Cer- 

 tainly a most laudable motive ; but we must not now in these days 

 be misled by it and accept as history all those standard volumes 

 which when analyzed are nothing but concealment of actual facts 

 for the sake of helping the nation. 



We must, hasten, however, to the third cause of the trouble, and 

 that was that the first history of the Revolution which all the others 

 have followed and copied was an English whig partisan argument. 



The English whig party were in a peculiar position during the 

 Revolution, with a rebellion on hand that seemed likely to rend 

 the British empire asunder. They were in a very small minority, 

 overwhelmingly outvoted on every subject. They adopted as their 

 policy for the American War, the principle, or rather supposition, 

 that if the troops were all withdrawn from the colonies and no at- 

 tempt made to coerce them, the Americans would voluntarily sub- 

 mit to be ruled by England and form an ideal spectacle of uncoerced 

 colonies willingly and gladly remaining under the tutelage of their 

 mother. 



It was a beautiful ideal as developed by the great whig orators, 

 Burke, Chatham and Barre, illustrated from history and art, and 

 dignified by passionate appeals to sentiment and manhood. Their 

 speeches have become classics of the English language and have been 

 recited for a hundred years by our school boys. Those orations 

 with others by the lesser whig lights to be found in the parliamen- 

 tary debates, together with the whole whig policy, were of course, 

 ver}' acceptable to our people. The whigs were continually asserting 

 that our people did not want independence ; they besought mild and 

 conciliatory measures for us ; they attacked the tory measures ; and 

 so far as they succeeded in checking in this way the tory policy of 

 coercion, they aided us in obtaining independence. 



