Trading with the Enemy: An American Tradition

trading with the enemy, an American tradition by Murray and Rothbard.

During the French and Indian War, 1754 to 1763, Americans continued the great tradition

of trading with the enemy, and even more readily than before. As in King George's war,

Newport took the lead. Other vital centers were New York and Philadelphia. The individualistic

Rhode Islanders angrily turned Governor Stephen Hopkins out of office for embroidering Rhode

Island in a foreign war between England and France. Rhode Island blithely disregarded the

embargo against trade with the enemy and redoubled its commerce with France.

Rhode Island's ships also function as one of the major sources of supply for French Canada

during the war. In the fall of 1757, William Pitt was told that the Rhode Islanders are a lawless

set of smugglers who continually supply the enemy with what provisions they want.

The crown ordered royal governors to embargo exports of food and to break up the extensive

traffic with the West Indies, but shippers again resorted to flags of truce and trade through

neutral ports in the West Indies. Monty Christie in Spanish, Española proved to be a particularly

popular intermediary port. The flags of truce device particularly irritated the British and the

lucrative sale of this privilege with the prisoner's names left blank was indulged in by Governor's

William Denny of Pennsylvania and Francis Bernard of New Jersey. French prisoners for token exchanges

under the flags were rare and therefore at a premium and merchants in Philadelphia and New York

paid high prices for these prisoners to Newport privateers. The peak of this trade came in 1759

for in the following year. With the end of the war with New France, the Royal Navy was able to

turn its attention to this trade and virtually suppress it. However, in the words of Professor

Bridenbaugh, privateering and trade with the enemy might have their ups and downs, but then as now

government contracts seem to entail little risk and to pay off handsomely. One, particularly

feeding at the trough of government war contract were especially privileged merchants of New York

and Pennsylvania. Two firms of London merchants were especially influential in handing out British

war contracts to their favorite American correspondence. Thus, the highly influential London

firm of John Tomlinson and John Hanbury, who was deeply involved in the Ohio company, received a

huge war contract. The firm designated Charles Apthorp and company its Boston representative

and Colonel William Bayard, its representative in New York. In addition, the powerful London merchant

Moses Franks arranged for his relatives and friends, David Franks of Philadelphia, and Jacob Franks

John Watts, and the powerful Oliver Delancey of New York, to be made government agents, New York

furthermore, was made the concentration point for the British forces and the general storehouse

of arms and ammunition, thus permitting many merchants to amass fortunes as subcontractors

if they enjoyed the proper family connections. By 1761, however, all the great ports in America

were suffering badly from the severe dislocation of trade wrought by the war. Smuggling and

trading with the enemy were not the only forms of American resistance to British dictation

during the French and Indian War. During the French Wars of the 1740s, Boston had been the center

of violent resistance to conscription for the war effort, an effort that decimated the Massachusetts

male population. During the French and Indian War, Massachusetts continued as the most active

center of resistance to conscription and of widespread desertion, often on mass, from the militia.

Thomas Poundall took over as governor of Massachusetts in early 1757, and cracked down bitterly on

Massachusetts liberties. He sent troops outside Massachusetts without assembly permission,

threatened to punish justices of the peace who did not enforce the laws against desertion,

hitherto interpreted, with salutary neglect, and threatened Boston with military occupation

if the assembly did not agree to the arrival and quartering of British troops. In November,

English recruiting officers appeared in Boston, and the assembly in the Boston magistrates for

bade any recruiting or any quartering of troops in the town. Poundall vetoed these actions

as violations of the royal prerogative, especially in emergencies. The magistrates then

countered by detaining recruiting officers in order to investigate them as potential carriers of

disease. When Poundall tried to frighten the Massachusetts assembly with a French threat,

it cogently replied that the real threat was the English army, and that if that army marched on

Massachusetts as their commander-in-chief, Lord Loudown, was threatening, Massachusetts would

resist the troops by force. The legislature insisted on the natural rights of the people of Massachusetts,

to defend which they would resist to the last breath a cruel invading army.

Lord Loudown was threatening to send his army from Long Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania

to compel the quartering of troops in Boston. In exasperation, Lord Loudown wrote to Governor Poundall

in December 1757, they, the Massachusetts assembly, attempt to take away the King's undoubted prerogative.

They attempt to take away an act of the British Parliament. They attempt to make it

impossible for the King either to keep troops in North America or to march them through his own

dominion. The Massachusetts legislature finally agreed to permit the quartering of troops,

but formally insisted that this quartering come under its own authority,

and not that of England or its governor. So few citizens of Massachusetts volunteered

for the 1758 campaign that Governor Poundall resorted to the hated device of conscription.

Resentment among the people was intensified by such British recruiting methods as

dragging drunken men into the army. The people erupted angrily in a series of riots,

attacking and beating up recruiting squads, all of which required the British to retain a large

troop in Massachusetts to crush an imminent rebellion. The Massachusetts draftees then

resorted to the silent but effective nonviolent resistance of mass desertions, refusal to obey the

hated officers and going on sick call. Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson was appointed to round

up deserters and hundreds were betrayed by the government's network of paid informers.

The people's resentment and resistance were intensified by the economic depression

in Massachusetts caused by high taxes for the war effort. Following the disastrous

Taikanderoga campaign in 1758, the English General James Wolf wrote in Viemont's

erud despair that the Americans are in general. The dirtiest, most contemptible cowardly dogs

that you can conceive. There is no depending upon them in action. They

desert by battalions, officers and all. Other officials and observers remarked wonderingly

of the individualistic spirit of the militiamen. Almost every man his own master and a general.

With the militia officers democratically elected by their men, the notion of liberty so generally

prevails that they are impatient under all kind of superiority and authority.

Moreover, the Americans added a new concept to the age-old European peasant and yeoman practice

of desertion, the assassination of officers who would not cooperate. Even in the following years

of English victory, the Massachusetts militia continued its resistance. In 1759, it refused

to remain at Lake Champlain for the winter mutinyed against its officers and returned home.

The following year, the Massachusetts militia refused to go from Nova Scotia to Quebec and mutinyed

again. General Jeffrey Amherst had high-handedly decided, in late 1759, to keep the Massachusetts

troops in Nova Scotia over the winter of 1759 to 60 despite the fact that their terms of

enlistment had expired. The men unanimously announced their refusal to serve any longer and

wrote to the commander demanding that they be sent home. The Americans were all placed under guard

thereafter. The British decided to shoot the mutinous colonists, but bloodshed was averted at

the last minute when the Massachusetts General Court extended the terms of enlistment to six months

and sweetened the pill with an extra bonus of four pounds per soldier. By spring, however,

the men and the General Court remained firm. The troops unanimously decided to leave and the

General Court refused to extend their terms in the army. So anxious were the Massachusetts soldiers

to leave to go home, that a party of them commandeered a ship and set sail for home. It was holy

and vain that Amherst demanded British-style discipline for these rebellious democratically

governed militiamen. Large numbers of deserting sailors furthermore left to join the merchant

marine for large-scale smuggling and trade with the enemy. New York City was a lively center for

deserting sailors and New York merchants systematically hid the sailors from the British troops.

The British compelled their return in 1757 by threatening to conduct a deliberately brutal

and thorough house-to-house search and to treat New York as a conquered city.

British troops were quartered upon New York against the vehement opposition of the citizens

they were supposedly protecting. In Philadelphia, pacifist mobs repeatedly attacked recruiting

officers and even lynched one in February 1756. In general, continuing conflict raged between

English commanders who wanted complete control over the colonial militia and the assemblies

which insisted on definite limitations on militia service. American disaffection with the war

effort was particularly marked after 1756 when the limited campaigned grab Ohio lands was

succeeded by full-scale war against French Canada. If Americans during the Seven Years War

pursued a policy of trading with the enemy, the British bitterly alienated the other countries

of Europe by repudiating all the cherished principles of international law on the sea that had

been worked out over the past century. The developed and agreed upon principle of international

law was that neutral ships were entitled to trade with a warring country without molestation

by any belligerent. Free ships make free goods unless the goods were actual armaments.

After finally agreeing to the civilized principle of international law in the late 17th century,

England now returned to the paratical practice of attacking neutral ships trading with France

and of stopping and searching neutral ships on the high seas. England had long been the major

opponent of rational international law and of the great libertarian concept of freedom of the

seas which formed an integral part of that law. Neutral's rights were a corollary of that concept,

as was the doctrine, that no nation could claim ownership or sovereignty of the seas,

that in fact the citizens of any nation could use the open seas to trade, travel or fish with a

wood. During the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth had not accepted the grandiose claims of the mystic

astrologer Dr. John D of England's claim to ownership of the surrounding seas. After all,

England was then engaged in a certain freedom of the seas against the presumed Spanish and

Portuguese monopolies of the newly discovered oceans. But after the accession of the stewards,

Spain was no longer a grave threat to the seas, and England's overriding maritime interest

was to destroy the highly efficient and competitive Dutch shipping. Very early in his reign,

James I claimed ownership of the surrounding seas and the fish therein,

and Charles I, arrogantly claimed sovereignty over the entire North Sea. In opposition to the

steward pretensions, the great Dutch father of international law, the liberal Hugo Grotesque,

laid down the principle of freedom of the seas in his Mare Liberum in 1609, and integrated the

principle into the natural law structure of international law in his definitive treatise of 1625

De Jure Belli Agpazis. Grotesque was able to build upon the 16th century writings of the great

liberal Spanish jurists and scholastics, Francis Alfonso de Castro, Ferdinand Vasquez Mencea,

and Francisco Suarez, who flourished even in a time when the Spanish interest was in proclaiming

its sovereignty of the seas. Grotesque's libertarian view of freedom of the seas could expect to

meet stern opposition in many countries, but the greatest opposition was in England, where the

stewards mobilized scholars in their defense, the leading opponents of Grotesque and celebrants

of governmental and especially English sovereignty over the seas, where the Scott Professor William

Wellwood, 1613, the Italian-born Oxford Regius Professor Albertus Gentilus, 1613, who proclaimed

absolute English ownership of the Atlantic as far west as America. So John Burroughs, royal

bureaucrat, 1633, and John Seldon, 1635. England continued its grandiose claims during the 17th

century, but with its shipping ever more extensive by the end of the century, it began to consent

to be bound by international law on the high seas. England had also been the major opponent of

neutral rights in time of war and the Dutch, their major advocate. However, in the Treaty of 1674

with Holland, England finally agreed to the vital rule of free ships, free goods, in protection

of neutral shipping, a principle that France and Spain had at least formally ratified two decades

before. America before the declaration. But now, on the opening of the Seven Years War, England

arrogantly informed the Dutch and other neutrals that any of their ships trading with France would

be treated as enemy vessels under a species newly coined rule, outlawing neutral shipping that

the enemy had permitted in its ports in time of peace. Chief theoretician of this British

reversion to official piracy was the Tory Jacobite Charles Jenkinson. Britain's arrogant attacks on

neutral shipping and violations of international law during the Seven Years War alienated all the

neutral countries of Europe, who soon raised the cry to return to freedom of the seas.

Particularly harassed was the highly efficient Dutch shipping and fellow sufferers from British

policy were Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Russia, Naples, Tuscany, Genoa and Sardinia.

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