Britain Ends War: Vote Against America

The House of Commons voted to end the war on February 27, 1782. Not because they had lost. Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown four months earlier, but Britain still held New York, Charleston, and Savannah. The Royal Navy controlled the Atlantic. The war could have continued. Parliament chose to stop because it cost too much. The American war was draining twenty million pounds annually, and the national debt had doubled since hostilities began. France and Spain had joined the conflict against Britain, and the combined naval threat stretched the Royal Navy across the globe. The vote was close: 234 to 215 on a motion by General Henry Conway that declared anyone who sought to continue the war in America an enemy of king and country. King George III was furious. He drafted an abdication letter, announcing his intention to retire to Hanover rather than accept the loss of the American colonies. He never sent it, but the existence of the draft reveals the depth of his personal investment in the war. Lord North's government fell within days of the vote, and the incoming Rockingham administration opened peace negotiations that culminated in the Treaty of Paris in September 1783. The treaty recognized American independence, ceded the territory east of the Mississippi to the new nation, and returned Florida to Spain. Britain retained Canada, a consolation that would prove enormously consequential. The Commons vote was a pragmatic calculation rather than a principled concession: the war was unwinnable at an acceptable cost, and the resources being consumed in America were needed to defend more valuable imperial possessions in the Caribbean and India. Parliament chose the empire over the colonies.