A History of the American People

Smith’s notions of free-enterprise capitalism and a world market was good news both for
America's farmers and for its infant manufactures.
The war was a disaster for the old-style European monarchies. Spain emerged from the Peace
of Paris (1783) with nothing, with its crown poorer and weaker and its great viceroyalties in
Central and South America looking increasingly to the North for example and inspiration. The
big loser was France. It, too, got nothing from the peace. The war cost it a billion livres and
ruined its credit with the bankers of Europe. As Necker predicted, it did irretrievable damage to
France's public finances and compelled the bankrupt monarchy to take the road which led to the
calling of the Estates General, the Fall of the Bastille, the Terror, the Republic, military
dictatorship, and two decades of disastrous wars. All the wealthy aristocrats and leading
merchants who had helped America with their personal fortunes lost everything too, and one or
two had to be put on a pauper's payroll by a grudging Congress. The French ruling class learned
the hard way not to meddle with republicanism. The Comte de Segur, who served in America,
summed it up: We walked gaily over a carpet of flowers which concealed from us the abyss.' But he was comparatively lucky. Admiral d'Estaigne, who brought the first French fleet to the American coast, died by the guillotine. The war brought to the Thirteen States, now united after a fashion, immense miseries, losses, benefits, and unexpected blessings. There were winners and losers. Chief among the losers, especially in the long term, were the Indians. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, about 200,000 Indians lived east of the Mississippi, grouped in eighty five nations. Their instinct was to stay neutral. One Iroquois chief told the governor of Connecticut in March 1775:We are
unwilling to join on either side ... for we love you both-Old England and New.' Once the war
started, however, both sides sought Indian help and it was usually the British who got it. They
had defended Indian interests in the past and the Indians' intuition told them that an independent
America would be unrestrained in permitting western white expansion. So about 13,000 fought
for Britain, and if Sir William Johnson, greatest of Britain's Indian agents, who was Honorary Chief of the Six Nations,' had not died in 1774, the Indian alliance would have been much more effective. His son John and his nephew Guy did their best, however, and the Indians felt they had fought a hard and successful war on the whole. Their dismay at the Peace of Paris was all the more bitter, therefore. Britain abandoned them. At Niagara, the British envoys were told by the Indian chiefs:If it were really true that the British had basely betrayed them by pretending to
give up [our] country to the Americans, without our consent or consulting them, it was an Act of
Cruelty and Injustice that only the Christians were capable of doing.' The Americans interpreted
the treaty as giving them the right of conquest, and set to with a will. Federal agents told the
Delawares and Wyandots in 1785: We claim the country by conquest, and are to give, not to receive.’ The Indians of the great plains lost too. They had originally been protected from western expansion by French claims to the Mississippi. That barrier had gone in 1763. Then the British came to their rescue by the Great Proclamation. Now that, too, was null and void. They were on their own. For the slaves, the consequences of the Revolution were mixed. By forcing the Thirteen States to pool their resources and miminize their differences, the war necessarily obliged the New Englanders, who were growing increasingly restive about theorganic sin' of slavery, a phrase
coined during the Great Awakening, to overlook it for the time being. Hence even Adams,
already passionately opposed to slavery, agreed without argument to omit the slavery passage
from the Declaration of Independence. That was clearly a defeat for the slaves, and worse was to
come in the process of constitution-making. Moreover, the number of slaves actually increased