Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

ee, and mutinied again. General Jeffery Amherst had high-handedly decided,
in late 1759, to keep the Massachusetts troops in Nova Scotia over the
winter of 1759-60, 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 wholly in 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 campaign to 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 this civilized principle of international law
in the late seventeenth century, England now returned to the piratical
practice of attacking neutral ships trading with France and of stopping
and searching neutral ships on the high seas.
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