ing as an irresponsible fillibuster chief, or whether his instructions from the government justified his course. He has admitted that his official authority came through Gillespie's communications, which were required to be the same as Larkin's instructions, and these from their nature preclude the idea that his earlier acts could have been in obedience to orders essentially different. The nature of Larkin's instructions has been a jealously guarded secret by the Department of State-it has never been voluntarily revealed. And it is no wonder; for they conferred extraordinary powers on Larkin, who ostensibly was merely the United States consul at Monterey. The instructions were written by James Buchanan, Secretary of State under President Polk, and indicate the full policy of the administration in regard to California. They sweep away the foundations of Frémont's pretensions, and show his disobedient conduct to have been inspired by personal ambition, inflamed with the hope of being the conqueror of California. Larkin's instructions ran as follows: "The future destiny of that country is a subject of anxious solicitude for the government and people of the United States. The interests of our commerce and our whale fisheries on the Pacific demand that you should exert the greatest vigilance in discovering and defeating any attempts which may be made by foreign governments to acquire a control over that country. In the contest between Mexico and California we can take no part, unless the former should commence hostilities against the United States; but should California assert and maintain her independence, we shall render her all the kind offices in our power as a sister republic." While the exercise of compulsion or improper influence to acquire territory would be repugnant to the sentiments of the President, "he would not view with indifference the transfer of California to Great Britain or any other European power. The system of colonization by foreign monarchies on the North American continent must and will be resisted by the United States." This was in reply to a communication of Larkin, and the Secretary urged him to incite the Californians against foreign designs. "Whilst I repeat that this government does not, under existing circumstances, intend to interfere between Mexico and California, they would vigorously interfere to prevent the latter from becoming a British or French colony. In this they might surely expect the aid of the Californians themselves. Whilst the President will make no effort and use no influence to induce the Californians to become one of the free and independent States of this Union, yet if the people should desire to unite their destiny with ours, they would be received as brethren, * This paper presents a clear, succinct, and admirably condensed view of the chief facts on which Mr. Bancroft's judgment has been founded in his valuable history of California.—EDITOR. VOL. XVIII.-No. 3.-14

whenever this can be done without affording Mexico any just cause of complaint. Their true policy for the present, in regard to this question, is to let events take their own course, unless an attempt should be made to transfer them without their consent either to Great Britain or France. This they ought to resist by all the means in their power, as ruinous to their best interests and destructive of their freedom and independence. In addition to your consular functions, the President has thought proper to appoint you a confidential agent in California; and you may consider the present dispatch as your authority for acting in this character. The confidence which he reposes in your patriotism and discretion is evinced by conferring upon you this delicate and important trust. You will take care not to awaken the jealousy of the French and English agents there by assuming any other than your consular character." In conclusion Larkin was referred to Gillespie, with whom he was to co-operate.

Hubert H4 Bancroft

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.

OUR REVOLUTIONARY THUNDER

A cannon which had seen service throughout the Revolution was afterward, by order of Congress, inscribed, "The Hancock." This is one of four guns which constituted the whole train of field artillery possessed by the British colonies of North America at the commencement of the war, 19th April, 1775. Some weeks after that date, when General Ward took command of the army besieging Boston, he found only one six pounder and half a dozen three pounders. The revolutionists, however, soon captured the guns in most of the royal forts, securing a greater booty than anywhere else at Ticonderoga. But for the two hundred pieces there captured, the siege of Boston must have been a fiasco. Whenever Gage heard a Yankee battery he must have said, "That's my thunder!"

Yet not many field guns-only six at Trenton-were taken from the British before the surrender of Burgoyne, two years and a half after fighting began. Eleven pieces were lost at Brandywine. Running the British blockade with guns bought abroad was tedious, hazardous, and ruinously expensive. Accordingly, there was no more unexpected, rude awakening in the war to British ears than the roar of so many American cannon. "Where do you get your big guns?" was asked of a Massachusetts prisoner in England. His answer was, "We make them ourselves." The next question was, "Where did you get your patterns?" He is said to have replied, “From Burgoyne at Saratoga." He might have mentioned earlier models obtained at Ticonderoga and elsewhere.

The question where our Revolutionary thunder came from has not been fitly met by historians. We rise from Bancroft and Hildreth ready to exchange a good deal of the one's pessimism and the other's optimism for a chapter we do not find, on the domestic manufacture of Revolutionary artillery. Hence the following details cannot be thought beneath the dignity of history.

Three or four Massachusetts foundries turned out Revolutionary cannon. One was at Bridgewater. Here, Hugh Orr, whose establishment had already a quarter of a century's standing, produced a great number of iron and several pieces of brass ordnance from three to thirty-two pounders. These pieces were cast solid and bored-a novelty. In Springfield the government works were begun in 1778, and some cannon were cast there dur

ing the war. Before the close of that contest cannon were also cast in Abington. Cannon for the Revolutionary navy came from Hope furnace, in the town of Scituate, Rhode Island. The Connecticut council of safety, before the war had long continued, expended £1,450 on a furnace in Salisbury to cast cannon, and employed a corps of fifty-nine men to conduct it. The furnace of a tory in Lakeville, Litchfield county, was made to produce large quantities of cannon for the continental army. There is documentary evidence that at least these six New England towns indicated their rebelliousness in thunderous tones. It is hard to find any single town in New York which can make this boast, though the Sterling works in Orange county had cast cannon in the earlier French war, and perhaps did in the later struggle. New Jersey has a better record. Her furnaces in Morris county, at Hibernia and Mount Hope, were noted as yielding the ordnance of which the army of Washington had such pressing need. In Pennsylvania during the Revolution, Warwick furnace was very active in casting cannon, some of which were buried when the British drew nigh in 1777. The owner of Elizabeth furnace in Lancaster county, in payment for sundry great guns, received German prisoners, at one time forty-two and at another twenty-eight, at £30 per head. He had discovered that they knew better how to make guns than how to use them. Cornwall, now the oldest charcoal furnace in the Union, also yielded its quota of Revolutionary ordnance, and the owner of the Reading works, after a few experiments, made an output of one new gun every day. No state but Pennsylvania can clearly show four cannon-casting establishments in our first great struggle. Near Baltimore, however, cannon were cast in 1780, at Northampton, and from Ridgeley's furnace near it small cannon had been ordered by Congress in 1776. In the next year the Hughes Brothers, in Frederick county, furnished a thousand tons of cannon, for which they were paid $30,666.

In Virginia the only cannon foundry, so far as known, was at Westham, six miles above Richmond, and destroyed by Arnold in 1781. As to North Carolina, there were iron-works on Deep run, for two years' use of which in casting ordnance, etc., the provincial congress were ready to pay £5,000. In South Carolina Colonel Hill cast cannon for Revolutionary whigs at his iron-works, which so enraged the tories that they burned them. This burning cut the patriots to the heart so that one of their Scotch ministers said in his prayer: "Good Lord! if ye had na suffered the cruel tories to burn Belly Hell's [Billy Hill's] iron-works, we would na have asked any mair favors at thy hands. Amen!" These particulars attest the truth of the assertion of Governor Penn of Pennsylvania, when before

the house of Peers in 1775, that the art of casting cannon had been carried to great perfection in the colonies."

Mention was made above of certain brass guns as cast in Bridgewater. Probably every furnace, which had plenty of brass, may have experimented in that style of manufacture. There is now in the arsenal at Hartford, Connecticut, a brass cannon inscribed "B. Hanks, 1790." In that year the casting of brass cannon was commenced in Waterbury. Can any Connecticut brass piece be shown to have originated at an earlier era? But it was in Pennsylvania that most brass guns seem to have been turned out. Two brass guns made for the government were tested at the Reading furnace in December, 1776. One burst, and the other stood the test well. In November, 1776, the Pennsylvania Council of Safety had spent more than £77 on their brass cannon foundry, and in the first days. of 1777, General Knox, writing from Morristown, inquires whether brass pieces were in making at Philadelphia—and urges exertions to forward the business to the utmost. He even sends a draft or drawing of a howitzer in his camp, as it was intended to cast some of the same sort in Philadelphia. The council appointed a commission to engage experts in casting brass ordnance, and authorized them to draw on the treasurer for all the necessary expenses. On June 16th of that year, James Byers, who had cast brass guns for the government, was ordered to hold himself in readiness. to remove with his apparatus at a moment's warning on the approach of the British. On August 19, he asks to be allowed to use State copperwhich came from a mine on French creek and made bronze-work easier in Pennsylvania than in most provinces. In the Fourth of July procession of 1788 in Philadelphia, there was a car which bore a furnace in full blast, that finished a three-inch brass howitzer on the way, which at the haltingplace was mounted and fired.

Seeing specimens of American artillery created in the first years of the war, the royal leaders might have learned a lesson from Milton's angels. Those celestials battling with devils who had extemporized similar hollow engines, would have retired from the field, as Milton says, but for their power to pluck up mountains and bury those machines deeper than the mines where their ores had been digged.

James D. Butter.

MADISON, WISCONSIN.