George III

The British Empire was itself coming into its own as George III settled into his throne; soon after his ascension, victory in the Seven Years’ War established British hegemony over south Asia and North America east of the Mississippi. The young king was the leader of an ascendant global empire, but his practical power was severely limited, restricted largely to the exercise of informal influence and vestigial kingly prerogatives.

As George struggled to form a lasting ministry to manage the empire’s affairs—the appointment of ministers being among the last of the monarch’s remaining privileges—Parliament grappled with the task of reconciling the spoils reaped from the Seven Years’ War with the costs incurred by the lengthy, expensive conflict. Subsequent parliamentary efforts to offload some of the financial burden of colonial defense onto their thirteen North American colonies through the passage of tax bills like the Stamp Act stoked colonial discontent, which began to coalesce in earnest during the first decade of George’s reign.

For his part, George was too busy with domestic politics to invest much attention in colonial affairs, essentially allowing Parliament to exercise its will. Where he did intercede, it was with an eye toward moderation, and he counseled his ministers to avoid taking measures that would antagonize the American colonists. In a 1767 letter, he even characterized the “affair of the Stamp Act” of 1765 as “abundant in absurdities” which “deprived the Americans by restraining their Trade, from the means of acquiring Wealth, and Taxed them.”

Even as colonial fury at Parliament grew, Americans continued to support the king in the early and mid-1760s, viewing the monarch as a benevolent sovereign and bulwark against the excesses of Parliament. Although public criticism of George became more widespread in the late 1760s and early 1770s, many Americans retained their sympathy toward the king even as the colonies lurched toward full-scale revolt, continuing to appeal to royal authority for redress of their grievances.

Despite his early advocacy of moderation, George’s steadfast belief in the essential righteousness of British colonial governance and the right of Parliament to exercise authority over Britain’s possessions tempered any sympathy he might have felt for American complaints. As American radicals increasingly engaged in loud acts of defiance like the destruction of tea in Boston Harbor, George took a harder line on colonial affairs. In contrast to his moderate position on the Stamp Act in the 1760s, by 1774 George strongly advocated on behalf of the punitive Coercive Acts (dubbed the “Intolerable Acts” in the colonies).

In George’s conception, the monarch was a critical component of a British constitutional system predicated on parliamentary supremacy and strict obeisance to the lawful hierarchy of power. When American colonial grievance crossed the boundary of propriety, George viewed it as his royal duty to correct his wayward subjects ruthlessly. In the autumn of 1774, he declared to his prime minister, Frederick, Lord North, in a series of letters that “the dye is now cast, the Colonies must either submit of triumph. . . . We must not retreat” for “the New England Governments are in a State of Rebellion [and] blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this Country or independent” and “we must either master them or totally leave them to themselves and treat them as Aliens.”

After the Revolutionary War  erupted the following year , George ignored internal opposition and the Olive Branch Petition (a request sent by the Continental Congress that the king broker reconciliation between Parliament and the colonies) and pursued punitive measures against the rebels. In response to the  Battle of Bunker Hill , he issued “A Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition” on 23 August 1775, declaring that the colonies had “proceeded to an open and avowed Rebellion, by arraying themselves in a hostile Manner to withstand the Execution of the Law.” He further displayed his dedication to lawful parliamentary prerogative in suppressing the American revolt by stating the following month that “I am fighting the Battle of the Legislature.”

Although King George’s conduct was not the issue that first sparked the colonial revolt, his stubborn refusal to negotiate with the colonists pushed the revolution in a republican direction. In late 1775 and early 1776, popular radical literature like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense began fomenting truly widespread antimonarchical sentiment, eventually culminating in the decisively republican Declaration of Independence, which directly indicted George’s alleged tyrannies. This republican fervor was accompanied by a rash of dramatic acts of disavowal by American patriots repudiating their king, most prominently the destruction of statues of King George III across the colonies.

George closely supervised the new colonial war from its earliest days. Although Parliament and his ministers retained ultimate authority and the capacity to overrule him, Lord North’s weakness opened an avenue for George to take command over the war’s conduct from afar, although his ability to directly impact military affairs was mediated by his colonial secretary for America, Lord George Germain.

The king personally selected generals  William Howe ,  Henry Clinton , and  John Burgoyne  for command in America; paid close attention to supply and logistical details; and even contributed to British strategy making and campaign planning. Alongside Germain, he advocated for an aggressive military solution to putting down the rebellion. As the war continued, George grew frustrated with his commanders’ failure to bring the war to a decisive resolution. In correspondence with Lord North, he suggested that Howe “turn his thoughts to the mode of war best calculated to end this contest as most distressing to the Americans, and which he seems as yet carefully to have avoided. To me it has always appeared that there was more cruelty in protracting the war than in taking such acts of vigour which must bring the crisis to the shortest decision.”

The British soon faced mounting military and diplomatic setbacks, like the defeat at the  Battle of Saratoga  in the autumn of 1777 and the entrance of France and Spain into the conflict. As forces within his ministry and Parliament began to agitate for a negotiated settlement or even a wholesale acceptance of American independence, George stood as the primary driver of continued British involvement. He had come to view the war as an existential struggle for the soul of the empire, believing that surrendering the American colonies could unravel the entire imperial enterprise painstakingly built by his predecessors.

Even as parliamentary hostility to the war’s continuation grew, George remained obstinate, forcing the increasingly exasperated but reliably pliant Lord North to stay the course despite Parliament's furious opposition. In his domination of Lord North, George expanded his authority, prolonging the war for years as he desperately sought a martial victory to preserve the empire. Although  spectacular British successes  in the southern colonies during 1780 briefly vindicated the king’s position, the defeat of  Charles, 2d Earl Cornwallis , at the  Siege of Yorktown  in the autumn of 1781 rendered George’s stance untenable.

Lord George Germain’s resignation in January 1782 was closely followed in March by the complete collapse of Lord North’s government. Deprived of his staunchest prowar minister and his pliable parliamentary leader, George was forced to accept that Parliament’s support for further American adventures would not be forthcoming and that the war was a lost cause. Intensely frustrated, George went so far as to consider abdication before coming to terms with defeat and delivering an address to Parliament on 5 December 1782 in which he acknowledged the independence of the American colonies.

In a private essay he penned in January or February 1783, George declared “America is lost! Must we fall beneath the blow?” as he grappled with his fears for the future of British dominion over its empire. However, in its totality, the king’s essay represents a synthesis of these concerns with a forward-looking perspective informed by contemporary intellectual currents. George acknowledged that the middle and New England colonies “rivalled us in many branches of our industry, and had actually deprived us of no inconsiderable share of the wealth we reaped by means of the others. . . . It is to be hoped we shall reap more advantages from their trade as friends than ever we could derive from them as Colonies.”

This clear-eyed economic assessment presaged George’s eventual acceptance of the new United States as an independent actor on the world stage. In 1785, when John Adams presented himself to King George III as the first U.S. ambassador to Britain, the sovereign delivered a telling monologue (recorded by Adams in a letter to John Jay) to the former revolutionary: “I wish you, Sir to believe, and that it may be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late Contest, but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do by the Duty which I owed to my People. I will be very frank with you. I was the last to consent to the Separation: but the Separation having been made, and having become inevitable, I have always Said as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the Friendship of the United States as an independent Power.”