What was Horatio Nelson's stand on the emergence of the independent United States? If he had maintained any stand at all?
History is fun on FR!
I regret that I must offer a sincere apology....I am not a Scholar of Lord Nelson and so I cannot provide a definitive answer to your question without some research time spent. I posted this thread as a tribute to this great man and as a tribute to the history, grand traditions and enduring honor of our dear British Friends and their great Nation. Although I hope that a more suitable Nelson scholar might emerge from cyberspace to help with your fascinating and entirely relevant question, a very cursory Google search brought me to a letter from Nelson himself, which MAY suggest that he had goodwill and great hopes for a prosperous friendship between Great Britain and the United States:
Letters and Dispatches of Horatio Nelson
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Again I apologize for being unable to provide a better answer, but hopefully another FReeper will be able to provide more insight. I am constantly amazed at the spectacular breadth of knowledge bursting forth from this site.
Being raised with indomitable British Naval discipline, I'm sure he viewed the colonial rebellion and the rebels with contempt. Probably saw it as an insult to King and country. He would have probably loved to blow away our ships on any given chance but sternly complied with his nation's policies when not in direct open conflict.
Per the Wikipedia:
By 1777 he had risen to the rank of lieutenant, and was assigned to the West Indies, during which time he saw action on the British side of the American Revolutionary War. By the time he was 20, in June 1779, he made captain; the 28-gun frigate Hinchinbrook, newly-captured from the French, was his first command.
In 1781 he was involved in an action against the Spanish fortress of San Juan in Nicaragua. A success, the efforts involved still damaged Nelson's health to the extent that he returned to England for more than a year. He eventually returned to active duty and was assigned to Albemarle, in which he continued his efforts against the American rebels until the official end of the war in 1783.
Command
In 1784, Nelson was given command of the 28-gun Boreas, and assigned to enforce the Navigation Act in the vicinity of Antigua. This was during the denouement of the American Revolutionary War, and enforcement of the act was problematic—now-foreign American vessels were no longer allowed to trade with British colonies in the Caribbean Sea, an unpopular rule with both the colonies and the Americans. After seizing four American vessels off Nevis, Nelson was sued by the captains of the ships for illegal seizure. As the merchants of Nevis supported them, Nelson was in peril of imprisonment and had to remain sequestered on Boreas for eight months. It took that long for the courts to deny the captains their claims, but in the interim Nelson met Fanny Nesbit, a widow native to Nevis, whom he would marry on March 11, 1787 at the end of his tour of duty in the Caribbean.
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Of course, given recent events, we consider him a hero on both sides of the pond for blowing away the French.
Even without that, what an amazing man. A true hero.