Carlisle Peace Commission
The Carlisle Peace Commission was a group of
The
Background
The first attempt at negotiation between Great Britain and the rebellious
After the British defeat at
The commission was empowered to offer a type of self-rule that Thomas Pownall had first proposed a decade earlier and later formed the foundation of British Dominion status.[1] The fact that the commission was authorised to negotiate with the Continental Congress as a body also represented a change in official British government policy, which had been to treat only with the individual states.[2]
The historian David Wilson is of the opinion that the war could have been avoided if the terms it proposed had been offered in 1775.[3] The historian Peter Whiteley, however, notes that George III would have been unlikely to agree then to make such an offer.[4]
Commission
One thing that the commissioners did not learn before their departure was that General
On June 13, the commissioners sent a package of proposals to Congress, which was then holding sessions in
Thomas Paine denounced the British proposals.[14] Gouverneur Morris wrote several essays against the proposals.[15] The commissioners circulated a manifesto,[16] which was printed in the Hartford Courant on October 10, 1778.[17] The Marquess of Rockingham, a leading opponent of the war, objected to the threats in the manifesto and moved to disavow it.[18]
Aftermath
Johnstone sailed to Britain in August, and the other commissioners returned in November 1778.[4] The British, being unable to bring General George Washington's Continental Army to a decisive engagement, resumed the military campaign and turned to a Southern Strategy as their next attempt to win the war in North America.[3] A further attempt in December 1780 to seek a diplomatic peace in the form of the Clinton-Arbuthnot peace commission, failed, and there were no further substantive peace overtures until the American victory at Yorktown in 1781.[citation needed]
Along with being passed over for promotion and the money promised him from the British to capture
References
- ISBN 978-0-7656-0074-5.
- ISBN 978-0-275-97693-4.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-57003-573-9.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85285-145-3.
- ISBN 978-0-19-518121-0.
Carlisle Commission.
- ISBN 978-0-87113-661-9.
- ^ Willcox, p. 229
- ^ Willcox, p. 230
- ISBN 978-0-8420-2664-2.
- ISBN 978-0-312-24195-7.
- ISBN 978-0-415-93915-7.
- ^ Date in History: 1778 National Park Service
- ^ Henri La Fayette Villaume Ducoudray Holstein (1824). Memoirs of Gilbert Motier La Fayette. Charles Wiley. pp. 41–43.
- ^ Kevin T. Springman, "Notes and Documents: Thomas Paine's Response to Lord North's Speech on the British Peace Proposals." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 121.4 (1997): 351-370. online
- ISBN 978-0-312-24195-7.
- ^ Benson John Lossing (1852). The Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution. Harper and Brothers. p. 350.
Carlisle Peace Commission manifesto
- ^ Newspaper; Hartford, 1778, Connecticut Courant, "Carlisle Commission Manifesto", 4 Pages.
- ISBN 978-0-7656-0074-5.
Further reading
- Brown, Weldon A. Empire or Independence: A Study in the Failure of Reconciliation, 1774–1783 (1941; reprinted 1966).
- Einhorn, Nathan R. "The Reception of the British Peace Offer of 1778." Pennsylvania History 16.3 (1949): 191–214. online
- Gregory, Anthony. "'Formed for Empire': The Continental Congress Responds to the Carlisle Peace Commission." Journal of the Early Republic 38.4 (2018): 643–672.
- Rabb, Reginald E. "The Role of William Eden in the British Peace Commission of 1778." The Historian 20.2 (1958): 153–178.
- Ritcheson, Charles R. British Politics and the American Revolution (1954). xvi + 320 pp
- Springman, Kevin T. "Notes and Documents: Thomas Paine's Response to Lord North's Speech on the British Peace Proposals." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 121.4 (1997): 351–370. online
- Willcox, William (1964). Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence. New York: Alfred A Knopf. OCLC 245684727.
Primary sources
- Commager, Henry Steele and Richard Morris, eds. The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution As Told by Participants (1975) vol 2 pp 691–701 online