Excerpt from An Impartial Opinion on the Alabama Question, and the Manner of Settling It When the American colonies took up arms to gain their independence, the King and Parliament of Great Britain commenced by calling them rebels, and a considerable time passed before the English generals recognized the American militia as troops of a. Belligerent power, that is, as honorable enemies. It is remembered how Lord Howe at first refused the title of general to Washington, although he desired to nego tiate with him, and how proudly the great general repelled the claim: of his adversary to treat him as a private individual, when he commanded the armies of his country. It is also remembered how the American General Lee, who was taken prisoner by the English troops in 1776, was at first treated as a criminal prisoner, until the efforts of Washing ton and his threats of reprisals induced the hostile general to treat Lee as a prisoner of war.* Still, in the course of the war of independence the English decided to relax their rigor and to treat their enemies as a belligerent power. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.