Carlisle Peace Commission

The Carlisle Peace Commission was a group of British peace commissioners who were sent to North America in 1778 to negotiate terms with the rebellious Continental Congress government during the American War of Independence. The commission carried an offer of self-rule, including Parliamentary representation within the British Empire. The Second Continental Congress, aware that British troops were about to be withdrawn from Philadelphia, insisted on demanding full independence, which the commission was not authorised to grant. The Peace Commission marked the first time the British government formally agreed to negotiate with Congress; a previous informal attempt at negotiation, known today as the Staten Island Peace Conference, took place in 1776.

The Earl of Carlisle, who headed the commission

Background
See also: Diplomacy in the American Revolutionary War and Philadelphia campaign

The first attempt at negotiation between Great Britain and the rebellious Thirteen Colonies after the outbreak in April 1775 of the American War of Independence took place in September 1776, when a committee from the Second Continental Congress agreed to meet with Admiral Lord Richard Howe, who had been given limited powers to treat with colonies individually. The limited authority given to both Howe and the American negotiators made it a virtual certainty that nothing would come of the meeting. The meeting was a failure, in part because the Congress had recently declared independence from Britain, something Howe was not authorised to recognise, and because the American commissioners had no substantive authority from Congress to negotiate.

After the British defeat at Saratoga in October 1777, and fearful of French recognition of American independence, the Prime Minister, Lord North, had Parliament repeal such offensive measures as the Tea Act and the Massachusetts Government Act, and sent a commission to seek a negotiated settlement with the Continental Congress. The commission was empowered to offer a type of self-rule that Thomas Pownall had first proposed a decade earlier (and which 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 before then been to treat only with the individual states.[2]

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] Historian Peter Whiteley, however, notes that King George was unlikely to agree to make such an offer then.[4]

Commission

William Eden organized and served on the commission, but it was headed by the Earl of Carlisle, and also included George Johnstone who had previously served as Governor of West Florida. Walpole remarked that Carlisle, then a young man, was "very fit to make a treaty that will not be made"[5] and that he "was totally unacquainted with business and though not void of ambition, had but moderate parts and less application."[4] Richard Jackson declined to serve after it became known that the United States and France had signed a Treaty of Alliance.[6] The commissioners also learned of the Franco-American alliance before they set out in April.

One thing the commissioners did not learn before their departure was that General Sir Henry Clinton had been ordered to evacuate Philadelphia, even though his orders had been issued one month before they left. Carlisle was of the opinion that the administration had done this intentionally, since they might not otherwise have gone at all. Carlisle wrote to his wife of the situation, "We all look grave, and perhaps we think we look wise. I fear nobody will think so when we return ... I don't see what we have to do here."[7] Upon learning of the planned withdrawal, Carlisle appealed to Clinton to delay it, but, in rejecting the appeal, Clinton cited his orders to act without delay. This prompted Carlisle to observe that the administration wanted the commission to be "a mixture of ridicule, nullity, and embarrassments."[8] Eden was upset that he wasn't told of Clinton's orders, since the British intent to withdraw further stiffened American resolve.[9] On June 13, the commissioners sent a package of proposals to Congress, which was then holding sessions in York, Pennsylvania.[10] Congress replied insisting that either American independence be recognised, or that all British forces first withdraw from the states, terms the commission was not authorised to accept.[4] The commission attempted to appeal to public opinion, with warnings of widespread destruction, but was unsuccessful.[11] Johnstone tried to bribe some Congressmen, and the Marquis de Lafayette challenged Carlisle to a duel over some anti-French statements he had made.[12][13]

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, 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 Washington 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, after which there were no further substantive peace overtures until the American victory at Yorktown in 1781.

It was upon the failure of this negotiation effort that Benedict Arnold elected to switch over to the side of the British during the American Revolution.

References
  1. Jerome R. Reich (1997). British friends of the American Revolution. M.E. Sharpe. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-7656-0074-5.
  2. Neil Longley York (2003). Turning the world upside down. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 135–136. ISBN 978-0-275-97693-4.
  3. David K. Wilson (2005). The southern strategy. Univ of South Carolina Press. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-57003-573-9.
  4. Peter Whiteley (1996). Lord North. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 175. ISBN 978-1-85285-145-3.
  5. John E. Ferling (2007). Almost a miracle. Oxford University Press US. p. 270. ISBN 978-0-19-518121-0. Carlisle Commission.
  6. Don Cook (1996). The Long Fuse. Atlantic Monthly Press. p. 299. ISBN 978-0-87113-661-9.
  7. Willcox, p. 229
  8. Willcox, p. 230
  9. Mary A. Giunta, J. Dane Hartgrove (1998). Documents of the emerging nation. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-8420-2664-2.
  10. James J. Kirschke (2005). Gouverneur Morris. Macmillan. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-312-24195-7.
  11. Lester H. Brune (2003). Chronological History of U.S. Foreign Relations: 1607-1932. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-93915-7.
  12. Date in History: 1778 National Park Service
  13. Henri La Fayette Villaume Ducoudray Holstein (1824). Memoirs of Gilbert Motier La Fayette. Charles Wiley. pp. 41–43.
  14. 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
  15. James J. Kirschke (2005). Gouverneur Morris. Macmillan. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-312-24195-7.
  16. Benson John Lossing (1852). The Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution. Harper and Brothers. p. 350. Carlisle Peace Commission manifesto.
  17. Newspaper; Hartford, 1778, Connecticut Courant, "Carlisle Commission Manifesto", 4 Pages.
  18. Jerome R. Reich (1997). British friends of the American Revolution. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 85–86. 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
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