THE SENTIMENT OF INDEPENDENCE, ITS GROWTH AND CONSUMMATION.
BY GEORGE E. ELLIS, D. D., LL. D.,
_President Mass. Hist. Society._
THE assertion needs no qualification that the thirteen colonies would
not in the beginning have furnished delegates to a congress with the
avowed purpose of seeking a separation from the mother country; and
we may also affirm, that, with a possible forecast in the minds of
some two or three members, such a result was not apprehended. If any
deceptive methods—as was charged at the time—were engaged in turning
a congress avowedly called to secure a redress of grievances into
an agency for securing independence, they will appear in the sharp
scrutiny with which we may now study the inner history of the subject.
And if an explanation of the course of the Congress can be found,
consistent with its perfect sincerity, we must then seek to trace the
influences alike of the new light which came in upon the delegates,
and of successive aggravating measures of the British government, in
substituting independence as its object. Though it is certain that
Samuel Adams, fretting under the hesitations of Congress, had proposed
to an ardent sympathizer that the four New England colonies should act
in that direction by themselves, his own clear judgment would have
satisfied him that that step would have been futile unless the other
colonies followed it. If there were but a single colony from which no
response could be drawn, the consequences would have been obstructive.
That different sections of the country should have furnished leaders
so in accord as Samuel Adams, Richard H. Lee, and Gadsden was a most
felicitous condition. A congress, then, composed of delegates from all
the colonies was the indispensable and the only practicable method
for working out the scheme of independence, and even such a congress
must avoid basing its action on local grievances. The reserve which
the delegates from Massachusetts found it politic to practise, in not
obtruding their special grievances, was well decided upon from the
first, and proved to be effective. That the circumstances required
patience in such men as the Adamses is abundantly evident from the
frankness with which they wrote outside of Congress of the temporizing
and dilatoriness of what went on in it.
There is no general assertion which comes nearer to the truth on
this subject than that, from the first colonization of America by
the English, the spirit of independence was latent here, and was in
a steady process of natural development. George Chalmers, with the
opportunities of a clerk of the Board of Trade, made an inquisitive
private study of State Papers, and reached the full conviction that
the colonists from the start, not only quietly assumed, but really
aimed at an independence. He quotes abundant warnings, and charges the
successive crown officials here and at home with culpable negligence
in not acting on these warnings when they might have done so.[661] The
pages of Chalmers confirm and illustrate the fact that the colonists
lived in the enjoyment of a more real autonomy, and a do-as-you-please
enfranchisement, than was shared by home subjects. There went with this
a sort of assumption, a bold conceit, a sturdy truculency, which could
be easily trained into defiance.[662]
Large allowance also must be made on account of the fact that the
colonies had mastered their most critical perils wholly from their own
resources. English benevolence in private individuals had generously
fostered some enterprises of learning and charity here. But government
had left the exiles to fight their own battles against the savages
and the earliest French enemies. Far back in colonial times Governor
Winthrop records that, in some emergent strait of the exiles, a
suggestion was made of turning to England for help. The suggestion
was shrewdly put aside, lest, having asked such aid, they might incur
obligations.
It was of course admitted that the colonists had come under some
form of obligation to the home government during the exhausting
campaigns of the French and Indian wars. A question, however, soon
came under debate, as to what that obligation involved. Great Britain
assumed that it justified a demand upon the colonists for revenue.
The colonists roused themselves to repudiate any obligation to be
enforced by the payment of a tax imposed by a Parliament in which
they had no representation. It was just here that the latent spirit
of independence led the colonists to examine to the root their
relations of allegiance, and, on the other hand, their natural rights.
The General Court of Massachusetts, in 1768, had admitted "that his
Majesty's high court of Parliament is the supreme legislative power
over the whole empire." It took less than ten years to bring it about
that Massachusetts either had not understood what it said,—at least,
had not meant to say exactly that,—or had come to think differently
about it.
In the Bill of Rights coming from the first Congress the committee
say: "In the course of their inquiry they find many infringements and
violations of rights, which they pass over for the present." These
previous impositions and disabilities came in, however, afterwards for
their full share of rhetoric and argument. As we trace the method in
which the controversy with government matured, we mark these stages
of it. Objection and forcible resistance found their first occasion
when, at the close of the French war, government devised the policy
of the Stamp Act. The colonists came to distinguish this as creating
an _internal_ tax, in contrast to the previous _external_ taxes,
through the laws regulating commerce, to which heretofore they had
not objected. Vindicating their resistance to the new internal tax,
they came to find similar grievances in the former external taxes.
So they were teaching themselves first to define and then to assert
independence.
We have become accustomed to associate with the term Congress the
idea of a legally constituted organic body, with defined powers
authoritatively assigned to it, the exercise of which is binding on
its constituents. Our Continental congresses were of quite another
sort, and had no authority save what might be granted to the wisdom and
practicability of the measures they advised. Most certain it is that
only a very small minority of the people of the colonies were concerned
in calling the early congresses. As certain, also, is it that a very
large preponderance of the people of all classes were then strongly
opposed to any violent measures, to sundering ties of allegiance, or to
seeking anything beyond a peaceful redress of grievances. On the whole,
while it must be admitted that Congress was generally in advance of its
constituency, it knew how to temporize and to give intervals of pause
in steadily working on to its ultimate declaration. "Natural leaders"
always start forth in such a cause, and they learn their skill by
practice.
When it became evident that, instead of any healing of the breach,
the whole activity of the Congress tended to widen it, a regret was
expressed in some quarters that, by the connivance and consent of
the royal governors, and through the regular legislative processes,
a more legal and conservative character had not been secured to this
meeting of delegates,—as if dangerous plotting might thereby have
been averted. But the patriot leaders of the movement were too well
advised to look for any such official coöperation. The very life of
their scheme depended upon its wholly popular conception. Nor could the
consent of governors and formal assemblies have been won to it. The
whole method of the steady strengthening of the spirit of alienation
from Great Britain was a working of popular feeling in channels
different from those of ordinary official direction and oversight.
It was but fair to assume that the objects of the first Congress
would be defined by the instructions furnished by those who sent
or commissioned its members. The delegates from New Hampshire were
bid "to consult and adopt such measures as may have the most likely
tendency to extricate the colonies from their present difficulties,
to secure and perpetuate their rights, liberties, and privileges,
and to restore that peace, harmony, and mutual confidence which once
happily subsisted between the parent country and her colonies."
Massachusetts bade her delegates "deliberate and determine upon wise
and proper measures, to be by them recommended to all the colonies,
for the recovery and establishment of their just rights and liberties,
civil and religious,[663] and the restoration of union and harmony
between Great Britain and the colonies, most ardently desired by all
good men." Rhode Island's charter governor empowered the delegates
"to join in consulting upon proper measures to obtain a repeal of the
several acts of the British Parliament, &c., and upon proper measures
to establish the rights and liberties of the colonies upon a just and
solid foundation." Connecticut authorized its delegates "to consult and
advise on proper measures for advancing the best good of the colonies."
The delegates from New York were trusted without any particular
instructions, having merely a general commission "to attend the
Congress at Philadelphia." So, also, New Jersey appointed its delegates
"to represent the colony of New Jersey in the said General Congress."
Pennsylvania sent a committee from its own Assembly in behalf of the
province "to consult upon the present unhappy state of the colonies,
and to form and adopt a plan for the purposes of obtaining redress of
American grievances, ascertaining American rights upon the most solid
and constitutional principles, and for establishing that union and
harmony between Great Britain and the colonies which is indispensably
necessary to the welfare and happiness of both." The deputies from
the three Lower Counties were "to consult and determine upon all such
prudent and lawful measures as may be judged most expedient for the
colonies immediately and unitedly to adopt, in order to obtain relief
for an oppressed people, and the redress of our general grievances."
It will be observed that the instructions from these eight colonies
are moderate and pacific in terms, without menace, or a looking to any
other results than harmony. Something a little more emphatic appears
in what follows. The Maryland delegates were to use all efforts in
their power in the Congress "to effect one general plan of conduct
operating on the commercial relations of the colonies with the mother
country." Virginia bade her delegates "consider of the most proper
and effectual manner of so operating on the commercial connection of
the colonies with the mother country as to procure redress for the
much-injured province of the Massachusetts Bay; to secure British
America from the ravage and ruin of arbitrary taxes; and speedily to
procure the return of that harmony and union so beneficial to the
whole nation, and no ardently desired by all British America." The
delegates of South Carolina are instructed "to concert, agree to, and
effectually prosecute such legal measures as shall be most likely to
obtain a repeal of the said acts and a redress of those grievances."
The deputies of North Carolina were authorized "to deliberate upon the
present state of British America, and to take such measures as they may
deem prudent to effect the purpose of describing with certainty the
rights of Americans, repairing the breach made in those rights, and for
guarding them for the future from any such violations done under the
sanction of public authority."
Now it is true that one may read as between the lines of these
instructions intimations of reserved purposes, and possibly menaces
that something more will be required if what is suggested in them fail
of effect; but as they stand, their tone is not hostile or menacing.
They limit the terms and measure of what they exact. Several very
pregnant suggestions present themselves. Men of a large variety of
opinions and purposes might take part in a congress so constituted.
If the measures proposed had been restricted, so to speak, to the
programme, there might have been substantial accord among the
delegates, and no one could have been startled and offended with what
they soon regarded as rebellious manifestations in the Congress.
The case of Joseph Galloway, at first esteemed a most resolute
patriot, and then committing himself to extreme loyalty, presents
us an example. He was a lawyer of great abilities, a gentleman of
wealth and of high social position. He had made many strong protests
against the oppressive measures of government. He was a member of the
Pennsylvania Assembly eighteen years, and twelve years its speaker. He
says[664] that when he was chosen as a delegate to the first Congress
he positively refused to serve unless he was allowed to draw his own
"instructions." He was permitted to do so, and he himself signed
them as speaker. They contain this injunction: "You are strictly
charged to avoid everything indecent and disrespectful to the mother
state." Chosen a delegate to the second Congress, he positively
declined to serve, though importuned to do so by Dr. Franklin. The
instructions given to the eight associates named with him for this
second Congress contained the stringent words, "We strictly enjoin
you that you, in behalf of this colony, dissent from and utterly
reject any propositions, should such be made, that may cause or lead
to a separation from the mother country, or a change of the form of
government." The removal of this restriction on June 14, 1776, enabled
a majority of the delegates to give the vote of the province for
independence.
No man in this first Congress marked a stronger contrast to Galloway
than Samuel Adams, the "man of the people." Compared with what Joseph
Reed called "the fine fellows from Virginia", Adams was not what is
conventionally called a gentleman; but while John Hancock brought from
Massachusetts money and ambition, his colleague carried the hardier
brains of the two. The odious epithet of "demagogue" attached to Adams,
not because of any beguiling arts, but from his plain simplicity of
garb, preferred associates, manners, and mode of life. In his cheap and
homely attire, dispensing with any other mode of influence than that of
an honest heart and a vigorous mind, he had made himself the familiar
companion of the mechanics, artificers, and craftsmen of North Boston,
the shipbuilders, joiners, and calkers,—the rough, honest, and thrifty
democracy,—with whom, sitting on a spar or loitering in a workshop, he
would spend long and instructive hours. He was puritanically religious
and rigidly observant of solemnities, prayed in his family, and asked
a blessing at each meal of his simple fare. He neglected his own
business to devote himself to public interests. Of his own poverty he
was neither ashamed nor proud. It would not have been seemly for him
to have presented himself to the courtly gentry of the Congress as he
appeared in the streets of Boston. It would doubtless have confirmed
the prejudice which many entertained of him as an ill-bred mass-leader.
For deep and wide learning in legal, political, and economical science,
added to his college culture, and for debating powers, he was the
peer of any of his associates. If he had been left to himself in his
straits he would have gone on his high errand clad as he was; but
before he was to go his friends had done the best they could for him.
The tailor, the hatter, bootmaker, and haberdasher, appearing at his
house from anonymous friends, had furnished him a complete outfit,
not, however, of the full sumptuousness of Hancock's. As for the rest,
Adams was well prepared in bodily presence to meet for the first
time his warm friend in correspondence, Richard Henry Lee. No truly
lineal citizen of the old Puritan colony will ever be ashamed of this
characteristic representative of its traditions and its people at the
first Congress,—this prophet of independence.
The fact, without any fulness of detail, is assured to us that there
was much of discordance and dissension in this Congress of 1774.
Probably there was scarcely a single proposition or speaker that did
not find an antagonist. Certainly it appeared that Congress was not
ready to break from the mother realm. Results, however, were reached
of a sort to prompt just such further measures from the British
government as to insure some livelier work in its next session. The
most decisively contumacious act of the Congress was the adoption
and approval of the resolves passed by the daring Suffolk County
(Massachusetts) meeting, which most clearly endorsed rebellion, and
took steps in initiating it.[665] It is to be remembered, moreover,
that in this first Congress, Washington, whose frank sincerity stands
unimpeached, denied that the colonies wished for, or could safely,
separately or together, set up for independence. Before Congress again
met in May, the first blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord;
and Massachusetts, as the first colony to set up as a consequence its
own autonomy, sought and received the ratification of its conduct by
Congress, after it had assembled.
The instructions to the delegates still held them to seeking a redress
of grievances and the restoration of harmony, as "desired by all good
men", and in pursuit of this object a second letter or petition to
the king, which John Adams calls "Dickinson's letter", was prepared
and adopted by Congress. It was respectful, earnest, tender in its
professions and appeals. It besought the king himself to interpose
between his much-abused and long-enduring subjects and the oppressive
measures of his ministers, as if he himself was misled and imposed
upon by them. The bearing which this most remarkable letter has upon
the charge of insincerity and hypocrisy in the action of Congress is
apparent. It is enough to say here that Richard Penn, the messenger
who bore the letter, was not permitted to see the king, whose only
recognition of it was a violently toned proclamation for suppressing
rebellion and sedition among his American subjects. Startling was the
effect on the Congress of this royal declaration of an unrelenting
purpose, which arrived on November 1st, coupled with the intelligence
of a large reinforcement of the British army and navy, and with the
purposed employment of seventeen thousand German mercenaries. The same
day brought an account of the burning of Falmouth, now Portland, by
Captain Mowat, reasonably exciting an alarm in all the settlements on
the seaboard. What might be lacking in the final resolution of some of
the leading members of Congress to come to the issue was well supplied
by these last measures of government, which could work only in the
direction of an implacable rupture. Still it is a matter of fact,
now attested by full evidence, that the majority of Congress, either
held by their lingering hope of some scheme of conciliation, or even
doubtful if their constituents would reinforce their own resolution
now, would not entertain a motion for independence.[666] A recess of
the Congress from August 5th to September 5th gave to some of the
members an opportunity to try the pulse of their constituents. The
king in his speech, October 26, 1775, reiterated his stern purposes.
It is noticeable that in the comments made upon it by speakers in the
opposition, the avowals of members in the Congress were confidently
quoted as repelling the charge that they were aiming for independence;
but General Conway said significantly, "They will undoubtedly prefer
independence to slavery."
The delegates of the thirteen colonies—Georgia being now
represented—met in Philadelphia, May 12, 1776, having now the whole
bearings of the struggle fully before them. The members had found their
way to the assurance that their professed loyalty to the constitution
of the realm consisted with, and might even require, a defiance of
its monarch. There were those who still held back. We note that
personal alienations declared themselves between members, starting
from differences of opinion or strength of resolve, as they faced the
final question. Perhaps it is well that oblivion has been allowed to
settle over the attitudes and words of some of the actors of the time,
whether in or out of Congress. Gadsden, Lee, the Adamses, and Patrick
Henry were ready and eager for the boldest venture, supported by Chase
of Maryland, Ward of Rhode Island, Wolcott and Sherman of Connecticut,
and at last by Wyeth of Virginia. Wilson of Pennsylvania held back. So
did the strongly patriotic Dickinson, restrained by Quaker influence.
He was yet to be reassured, and his ballot was to be the decisive one.
Massachusetts should have been a unit; but Samuel Adams and Hancock
were alienated, and Paine and Cushing were not yet full-strung, but the
last-named was soon superseded by Gerry, who was in entire sympathy
with the Adamses. Congress recommended the colonies whose governors had
deserted their posts to set up governments of their own, if only for a
temporary purpose, till constitutional rule should be reëstablished.
Then, after an emphatic but calm restatement of grievances, and the
failure of all efforts to secure a redress, Congress engaged with the
question whether all the colonies might not be forced to set up such
a government of their own. The dastardly conduct of Lord Dunmore,
governor of Virginia, in following his own flight for refuge on board a
frigate with a proclamation to stir an insurrection among the slaves,
might well have left it to R. H. Lee, by direct instruction from his
constituents, early in May, to announce that on an appointed day he
should move for a declaration of independence. He did so on Thursday,
the 7th of June. His motions were for such a declaration, with a
complete dissolution of all political connection between the colonies
and Great Britain; for the forming of foreign alliances, and a plan of
confederation. John Adams seconded the motions. They were discussed on
Saturday in a committee of the whole. On Monday, after a long debate,
Rutledge moved a postponement of the question for three weeks. Up to
this point Jefferson says that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and South Carolina were not ready for the decision, and
thought it prudent to wait, though fast stiffening for the issue.
On June 10th Congress resolved that the consideration of Mr. Lee's
first proposed resolution—that declaring independence—be postponed
to the 1st of July; but that no time should be lost in the interval,
it appointed, on June 11th, a committee to prepare such a declaration.
This committee was Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and
Robert R. Livingston.[667] This postponement was in deference to the
unreadiness of the delegates of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina to take the decisive step. Some
unnamed member had procured the passage of a vote that on whichever
side the majority should turn, the decision should be pronounced
unanimous, for or against the resolutions. The vote of each colony was
to count for one, whatever the number of its delegates, the majority
in each delegation pronouncing for its colony. The debate was sharp
and intensely earnest. The vote of Pennsylvania was divided. Those
of the six colonies just named being in opposition, there was no
decision. Two of the halting Pennsylvania delegates being induced to
absent themselves on the next day, fifty delegates being present, the
resolutions prevailed by a majority of one province.[668] They had been
bitterly opposed by Livingston of New York, Dickinson and Wilson of
Pennsylvania, and Rutledge of South Carolina. Argument, persuasion, and
appeal were diligently pressed to draw the hesitating to acquiescence.
Meanwhile several of the colonies were anticipating the action of
Congress in taking their stand for independence: North Carolina, in
April, 1776, and also Massachusetts, at the same date; Virginia, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey followed; and New
York, as we shall see, soon came into line.
The proposed measures of Congress, associated with the leading one of
independence, were most sagaciously devised for dignifying the primary
resolve and elevating the action which should sustain it above the
character of a mere rebellion. Those measures assumed the rights and
responsibilities of nationality. The issuing of letters of marque and
reprisal, the making free of all the ports for commerce with all the
world except Great Britain, and the inviting of foreign alliances, were
exercises of the prerogatives of sovereignty, and were the reasons
assigned by France for regarding the United States as a nation at
war with another nation. On July 12th Congress appointed a committee
of one delegate from each colony charged with reporting a plan of
confederation, and another committee of five to propose a plan for
foreign alliances.
The Declaration marked a crisis alike in the forum and for the people.
It was read to Washington's army, and drew wild plaudits from officers
and from the ranks. As rapidly as panting couriers could disperse it
over the country it was formally received with parade and observance,
and read in town and village. It gave life and inspiration for every
successive measure to turn a purpose into an accomplished fact.[669]
Many of our writers, in tracing the working of the various opinions
which aided in fostering the spirit of independence, have found reason
to ascribe much influence to strong religious animosities, especially
to hostility to the state religion of England. It might perhaps be
difficult to trace sharply and directly through all the colonies any
lines of division of this character attributable to such an agency, as
distinct and positive as those which manifested themselves in secular
affairs, but there can be no question that sectarian influences had an
important part in the animosities of the time. It would have been but
natural that in this matter the line between the loyal and the disloyal
should have been drawn between the English Church and the dissenters,
who were the vast majority of the colonists; but this rule was by no
means without many marked exceptions. All the Episcopal ministers
officiating in the colonies had received ordination in England.
Their oath bound them to loyalty. Most of them, too, in the northern
provinces, were pensioners of an English missionary society. The test
applied to them when the spirit of rebellion was strengthening was
whether they would read or omit in their services the prayers for the
king. It stood little for them to plead in their defence their oath
and their dependence on a foreign fund. Such a plea was a poor one,
as being strictly personal and selfish, born of a love of ease and of
a cringing spirit. Some of them left their pulpits, and maintained a
discreet silence. Those who insisted upon fulfilling all the pledges
and duties of their office were in many cases roughly handled. It is
to be considered, however, that so far as sectarianism in religion
would alienate the colonies from Great Britain, it could not have
been a prime agent in the case, for then it would have alienated them
from each other, to which result it did not avail. The Tory refugee
Judge Jones uses the terms Presbyterians and Episcopalians as almost
synonymous with the terms rebels and loyalists. But this was by no
means true.[670] The leading patriot John Jay, with many others from
his province, was an Episcopalian. The Episcopalians of Virginia,
of Maryland, and of the Carolinas were as stiffly opposed to the
importation here of English prelates as were the Congregationalists of
New England. The Tory Galloway[671] traced our rebellious spirit to
the same source as that of the English civil war, viz., to Puritanism.
He wrote: "The disaffection is confined to two sets of dissenters,
while the people of the Established Church, the Methodists, Lutherans,
German Calvinists, Quakers, Moravians, etc., are warmly attached to
the British government." Galloway exceeded the strict truth in that
statement.
The numbers, position, and experiences of Episcopal ministers in the
provinces at the period of the war have been recently presented in an
elaborate and well-authenticated monograph on the subject.[672] From
this it appears that there were at the time not far from two hundred
and fifty clergymen, all of foreign ordination. The lack of Episcopal
supervision brought with it laxity of discipline. At the southward the
church gathered into it the wealthy, the officials of the government
and of the army and navy, professional men, and merchants. But their
clergy, instead of being, like their few brethren at the North,
stipendiaries of a foreign society, largely derived their support
from those to whom they ministered, and so, though being under the
oath of allegiance, were more free to share the patriotic sentiments
of the laity, and they did so. Clergy and laity in the Southern
provinces seem, many of them, to have been as strongly opposed, for
temporary or other reasons, to the introduction of a foreign prelacy
as were those at the North. Several of the Episcopal clergy in the
Middle and Southern provinces proved themselves most ardent patriots,
not only in discourse but by taking chaplaincies in the Continental
armies, and even serving in the ranks and as officers in command. The
trial test for deciding their position was in the religious services
required of them on the days appointed by Congress for thanksgiving or
fasting. Their choice was not a free one between a full or a mutilated
service of prayer. The severest sufferers of this class were among the
Episcopal ministers of New York and Connecticut, who resolved to stand
for loyalty. Some, however, trimmed to time and necessity; others were
patriots. Provoost, afterwards the first Bishop of New York, espoused
the side of the people.[673]
It was in New England that the "Puritanism" of which Galloway wrote had
the prevailing influence; and a very energetic and effective influence
it was, working with other agencies in making the English civil
government all the more odious because of the lordly prelates, who
ruled not only in church, but in state. The inherited and traditionary
spirit of New England had kept alive the memory of the ecclesiastical
tyranny which had developed Puritanism in Old England, and of the
trials and sacrifices by which deliverance had been secured. Those
very New England colonies in which the rebellious spirit was most
vigorous had been in but recent years, by help alike of sympathizers
and opponents, conservatives of the old ways and reformers with the
new, working their own way of relief from their theocratic basis of
government, and securing freedom for themselves in belief and worship,
with progress in the severance of church and state. They could not
patiently contemplate the establishment of prelacy among them. Two
occasions, operating as warnings, had freshened the old Puritan spirit
of New England just previous to the opening of civil contention.
One was the project, which had been zealously pressed, of sending
English bishops into the colonies, whose functions the popular mind
refused to distinguish between those which they exercised as lords,
both spiritual and temporal, in England and those of ordination
and confirmation, etc., which was all that was required of them as
"superior clergy" here. An animated pamphlet controversy had been
waging on this subject a decade before the outbreak of hostilities, in
which appeared as a champion on one side the bold and able minister
Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, and on the other, Secker, Archbishop of
Canterbury.[674] No English prelate ever had functions or presence
on our territory. The other reason, for a revival of the hostility
here against the Established Church, was found in the coming hither
into the old Congregational parishes, and the maintenance here by an
English missionary society, of a number of Episcopal ministers. It
was charged—not, however, justly—that the benevolent founders of
that society had endowed it solely for the support of missionaries
to neglected and forlorn persons,—fishermen and others in the
colonies,—whereas it was used to promote division and disaffection in
places well provided with a ministry. This charge was overstrained, for
no missionary was sent to any place where there were not those, few
or many, who were actual members of the English Church, or who stood
out against the doctrine and discipline of Congregationalism. None the
less did hostility to the English Church help largely to stimulate the
spirit of rebellion.[675]
The first provincial congress of Massachusetts, assembled in 1774, knew
very well the grounds of their reliance when by resolution they sent
an address to each and all of the ministers in the province, reminding
them of the valued aid and sympathy which their common ancestors in
the years of former trials had found in their religious guides, and
earnestly appealing for their help and strong efforts among their
people in resistance of the tyranny of the mother country. The New
England ministers were not slow in responding to—indeed, they had in
many cases anticipated—this appeal of their civil leaders. They had a
marvellous skill for discerning the vital relations between politics
and religion, while they had a strong repugnance to what was conveyed
by the terms "church and state." With very few exceptions,—such,
however, there were, in rare cases, of pastors in years and of timid
spirits,—the ministers were foremost in inspiriting patriotism and in
meeting all the emergencies of the times.[676]
The only organized and official measures taken by any one of the
religious denominations in sympathy with the American Revolution was
that of the Presbyterians, who had freed themselves from dependence on
a civil establishment. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians on the frontiers
of Virginia and North Carolina had stoutly vindicated their religious
rights against the Established Church in Virginia, and were among
the foremost in asserting their independence of the mother country.
With the sturdiest resolution they had successfully triumphed over
the Episcopal party in New York and thwarted government influence in
its behalf. John Witherspoon, the only clergyman in the Congress of
1776, gave by delegated authority the vote of the Presbyterians for
independence.[677]
And now the question may well be asked, Where rests the chief
responsibility for bringing to this result the protracted controversy
between the mother realm and her colonies? The Declaration of
Independence was yet to be made good by a severe struggle on the part
of the colonies, and to be accepted by the other party in the issue.
It is rarely, if indeed the case has any historical parallel, when
so large a measure of the responsibility for bringing about a signal
revolution in the great affairs of a nation can, as in this instance,
be directly charged upon an individual, and that was his majesty
George III.[678] The facts of the case with their full evidence stand
now clearly certified. That Declaration, with the event which it
signified, might have come in other ways. Agencies and events were
working to it. But that it came when it did, and as it did, he at
whose heavy cost it came was largely the conspicuous agent and cause
of it. That this is so, let the following tracing of the stages of the
developments attest. And by the charge here alleged is meant that the
king was mainly instrumental in bringing about the result, not merely
by an official or representative responsibility, nor by prerogative,
but by the prompting of personal feeling and private decision. It is
also to be admitted that the king may have been guided by the purest
motives and the loftiest sense of duty to preserve in any way the
jewels of his crown and the integrity of his empire. But none the less
it was his will and resolve that decided the issue.
As we have seen, the effect of every measure of the British government
brought to bear upon the colonies was directly the opposite of what
had been intended. Threats and penalties exasperated, but did not
intimidate. Seeming concessions and retractions did not conciliate.
Contempt and defiance called out corresponding and reciprocal feelings.
There was a strict parallelism between the ministerial inventions for
securing the mastery and the patriot ingenuity and earnestness for
nullifying them. The few incidental accompaniments of popular violence
and mobs were so familiar to the people of England at home as to count
for little. They were to be regretted and condemned, but they were
fully offset by the indiscriminate and vengeful punishments which
government visited upon them.
We are to remember that the king, if not the originator and adviser
of all these measures, gave them his cordial approval. More and
more, as the quarrel ripened, his personal will and resolve asserted
themselves, even autocratically. When the catastrophe finally came,
his prime minister frankly confessed, that by the king's urgency, and
in compliance with his own view of the claims of loyalty, he had been
acting against his own clear judgment of what was wise and right,
if not against his conscience.[679] Who, then, so much as the king,
as sole arbiter, by his own personal decision, substituted arms for
debate? The colonies, no longer the aggressive party, were put on
the defensive. Still, even after this dropping of the royal gage of
battle, the Assembly of Pennsylvania, with its residuum of Quakerism,
required of its members the old oath of allegiance to George III., and
Dickinson reported to it strongly loyal instructions for its delegates.
Is it strange that Franklin refused to take his seat in that body?
Two years later,—March 17, 1778,—the king writes to Lord North: "No
consideration in life shall make me stoop to opposition. Whilst any ten
men in the kingdom will stand by me, I will not give myself up into
bondage. I will rather risk my crown than do what I think personally
disgraceful. It is impossible that the nation should not stand by
me. If they will not, they shall have another king, for I will never
put my hand to what will make me miserable to the last hour of my
life."[680] And again, when the end was at hand, the king, writing to
Lord North, March 7, 1780, says: "I can never suppose this country so
lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant American
independence. If that word be ever universally adopted, I shall despair
of this country being preserved from a state of inferiority. I hope
never to see that day, for, however I am treated, I must love this
country."[681]
Recalling the fact that in all previous remonstrances[682] and
petitions, without a single exception, whether coming from a
convention, an assembly, or a congress, the ministry and Parliament
were made to bear the burden of all complaints and reproaches, we note
with emphasis that in the Declaration of Independence, for the first
time, "the present king of Great Britain" is charged as the offender.
Its scathing invectives in its short sentences begin with "He." His
tools and supporters are all lost sight of, passed unmentioned. This
substitution of the monarch himself as chargeable, through his own
persistency, with the whole burden heretofore laid at the door of his
advisers indicates the necessity which Congress felt of seeming to
sever their plain constitutional allegiance to the monarch, and of
ignoring all dependence on his ministers or Parliament, whose supremacy
over the colonies they had always denied. Hence the tone and wording of
all the previous utterances of Congress, deferential and even fulsome
as they now seem, in sparing the king, for the first time, in the
Declaration, are changed to give the necessary legal emphasis of the
capital letter in _He_. Indeed, the law and the man were essentially
as one, for the candid monarch told John Adams, on his subsequent
appearance as the minister of the United States, that he was the last
person in his realm to consent to the independence of the colonies. The
utter hopelessness of the measures of government was obvious to the
wiser statesmen of Britain and to those whose observation was guided by
simple common sense.[683]
A matter of sharp and reproachful criticism—which has not wholly
disappeared from more recent pages of history and comment—was found
in what certainly had the seeming of insincerity and duplicity in the
earnest professions of loyalty made by leading patriots while the
spirit of absolute independence, latent and but thinly veiled, was
instigating measures of defiance, and even of open hostility. The
patriots, it was boldly charged, had practised a mean hypocrisy. The
shock of the disclosure was at the time sudden and severe. Joseph
Galloway, though perhaps the most hostile and vengeful, was by no means
the least able or the most estranged and disappointed of a class of
very prominent men, who avowed that they had been alienated from the
patriot cause by the exposed duplicity of its wiliest leaders. They had
joined heart and hand in council and measures with those who professed
to be seeking only a redress of grievances, with an unqualified
loyalty as British subjects to the king and the constitution, and in a
disavowal of any idea of independence.
On the other side of the water, the Declaration, as "throwing off the
mask of hypocrisy" by the patriots, was a very painful shock to many
who had been most friendly and earnest champions of the cause of the
colonists. The members of the opposition in Parliament and in high
places were taunted by the supporters of government for all their
pleading in behalf of rebels. And when, besides the bold avowal of
independence, the added measures of a suspension of all commerce with
Great Britain, and of an alliance of the patriots with the hereditary
enemy of their mother country, came to the knowledge of those who
had been our friends, the consternation which it caused them was but
natural. Manufacturers and merchants, against whose interests so heavy
a blow had been dealt, and all Englishmen who scorned the French, our
new ally, might with reason rank themselves as now our enemies. Of
course, the ministry and the abetters of the most offensive measures of
government availed themselves of the evidence now offered of what they
had maintained was the ultimate purpose of the disaffected colonists,
hypocritically concealed, and they confidently looked for a well-nigh
unanimous approval and support of the vengeful hostilities at once
entered upon. It was affirmed that the British officers and soldiers
here, who had before been but half-hearted and lukewarm in fulfilling
their errand, now became as earnest and impassioned in war measures
as if they were fighting Indians, Frenchmen, or Spaniards. Such were
really the effects wrought on both sides of the water, not merely by
the bold avowal of independence, but by what was viewed as the exposure
of a subtle and hypocritical concealment of the purpose of it under
beguiling professions of loyalty.
What is there to be said, either by way of explanation or of
justification, of the course ascribed to the patriots? It is well
to admit freely that there was much said, if not done, that had the
seeming of duplicity and insincerity, of secrecy of design and of
sinuous dealing. And after yielding all that can be charged of this,
we may insist that, in reality, it was nothing beyond the seeming.
Neither disguise, nor duplicity, nor hypocrisy, nor artful or cunning
intrigue, in any shape or degree, was availed of by the patriots.
The result to which they were led was from the first natural and
inevitable, and it was reached by bold and honest stages, in thinking
out and making sure of their way. The facts are all clearly revealed
to us in their course of development. The maturing of opinion, till
what had been repelled as a calamity was accepted as a necessity,
is traceable through the changing events of a few heavily burdened
years, if not even of months and days, to say nothing of the symptoms
of it which a keen perception may discover during the career of four
generations of Englishmen on this continent. Its own natural stages
of growth were reached just at the time that it was attempted to
bring it under check by artificial restraint of the home government.
That government compelled the colonists to ask themselves the two
questions: first, if they were anything less than Englishmen; and
further, if their natural rights were any less than those of men. There
has been much discussion as to when and by whom the idea of American
independence was first entertained. It would be very difficult to
assign that conception to a date or to an individual. All that was
natural and spontaneous in the situation of the colonists would be
suggestive of it; all that was artificial, like the tokens of a foreign
oversight in matters of government, would be exceptional or strange
to it. Husbandmen, mechanics, and fishermen would not be likely to
trouble themselves with the ways in which their relations as British
subjects interfered with their free range in life. Larger and deeper
thinkers, like Samuel Adams, would feel their way down to comprehensive
root questions, sure at last to reach the fundamentals of the whole
matter,—as, What has the British ministry and Parliament to do with
us? It required nine years to mature the puzzling of a peasant over the
question of a trifling tax into the conclusion of a republican patriot
statesman. Every stage of this process is traceable in abounding
public and private papers, with its advances and arrests, its pauses
and its quickenings, its misgivings and assurances, in all classes of
persons, and in its dimmest and its fullest phases. We have seen how
it was working its way in the honest secrecy of a few breasts in the
first Congress, even when repelled as a dreaded fatality. Samuel Adams
is generally, and with sufficient evidence, credited as having been
the first of the leading spirits of the revolt to have reached—at
first in private confidence, steadily strengthening into the frankest
and boldest avowal—the conviction that the issue opened between the
colonies and the mother country logically, necessarily, and inevitably
must result in a complete severance of the tie between them. Even at
that stage of his earliest insight into the superficial aspect of
the controversy, when he is quoted as if hypocritically saying one
thing while he intended another, it will be observed that his strong
professions of loyalty are qualified by parenthetical suggestions of
a possible alternative. Thus, in the Address which he wrote for the
Massachusetts Assembly, in 1768, to the Lords of the Treasury, his
explicit professions of loyalty for his constituents close with the
caveat that this loyalty will conform itself to acquiescence so far
as "consists with the fundamental rules of the Constitution."[684]
Of course, as the oppressive measures of government exasperated the
patriots, they were not only led on to discern the full alternative
before them, but were unreserved in their expressions of a willingness
to meet it, at whatever cost. Still, however, what seemed like
hesitation in the boldest was simply a waiting for the slow and timid
to summon resolution for decisive action. Of the single measures in
Congress preceding the Declaration of Independence, the most farcical
and the most likely to be regarded as hypocritical was the second
petition to the king, which his majesty spurned. His ministers had to
compare with its adulatory insincerities some intercepted letters of
John Adams, written nearly at the same time, stinging with defiance
and treason. But John Adams well described this petition to the king
as "Dickinson's Letter." Dickinson himself is the most conspicuous
and true-hearted of the class of men who to the last shrunk from
the severance of the tie to the mother country. Yet he was to be
the one whose casting vote, by a substitute, was to ratify the
great Declaration. There may have been weakness in his urgency that
that petition should proffer a final hope of amity, but it was the
prompting of thorough manliness and honesty. As we have seen, it was
the royal scorn of that petition, backed by a wilful personal espousal
of responsibility, which made the king the real prompter of the
Declaration of Independence.[685]
Leaving out of view all obligations of the colonies to the mother
country, there was still quite another class of very reasonable
apprehensions which had a vast influence over the halting minds. What
would be the relations of the severed and possibly contentious colonies
to each other, with all their separate interests, rivalries, and
jealousies? Might not anarchy and civil war make them rue the day when,
in rejecting the tempered severity of the rule of a lawful monarch,
they had forfeited the privilege of having an arbiter and a common
friend?
Nor was this the only dread. The Indians were still a formidable foe
on the frontiers. So far as they were held in check, it was largely
by English arms and influence. Without anticipating the cruel and
disgraceful complication of the trouble which was to come, and the
aggravations of civil war, by the enlistment of these savages by
England as her allies against her former subjects, it was enough
for timid colonists looking into the future to realize the power of
mischief which lurked with these wild men in the woods. Every further
advance of the colonists beyond the boundaries already secured would
provoke new hostilities, and remind the pioneers of the value to them
of English armaments and reinforcements. And yet once more, those were
by no means bugbear alarms which foreboded for the colonists, left
to themselves, outrages from French and Spanish intrigue, ambition,
and greed of territory. France and Spain had losses and insults to
avenge against England, and might seek for reprisals on the undefended
colonists. It needs only an intimation, without detail, of the
apprehensions which either reason or imagination might conjure from
this foreboding, to show how powerfully it might operate with prudent
men in suspending their decision between rebellion and loyalty. All
these considerations, taken separately and together, whether as
resulting in slow and timid maturing of sentiment and of profession
in Congress, or as influencing the judgment of patriot leaders, or as
guiding the vacillating course of individuals and multitudes, may have
given a seeming show of insincerity and duplicity to words contrasted
with subsequent deeds. But a clear apprehension of all the alternatives
which were then to be balanced will satisfy us that there was little
room for hypocrisy to fill.
Some show of reason for charging upon the patriots duplicity and lack
of downright frankness was found in their professions of a steadfast,
but still a qualified, loyalty. If there was not at first some
confusion or vagueness in their own ideas on this point, they certainly
set themselves open to such a misunderstanding by the ministry as
to leave it in doubt whether they knew their own minds or candidly
declared them. The controversy, from its beginning till its close,
was constantly alleged to start from this discriminating standard of
loyalty: the colonists repudiated the exercise of authority over them
by Parliament and the ministry, and yet avowed themselves faithful and
loyal subjects of the king. The king could govern and act only through
Parliament. How could they repudiate the authority of Parliament and
respect that of the king? What was to be the basis, scope, and mode
of exercise of his authority? They certainly could not have in view
the exercise of an autocracy over them, the restoration of the old
royal prerogative which a previous glorious revolution had shattered.
The king could exercise his authority in the colonial assemblies only
through governors, and those governors had been rendered powerless
here. Even the sage and philosophic Franklin found himself perplexed
on this point. Writing from London to his son in New Jersey, March 13,
1768, he says: "I know not what the Boston people mean; what is the
subordination they acknowledge in their Assembly to Parliament, while
they deny its power to make laws for them?"[686] Galloway pertinently
asked of the first Congress, "if they had any other union of the two
countries more constitutional in view, why did they not petition
for it?" "The Congress, while they professed themselves subjects,
spoke in the language of allies, and were openly acting the part of
enemies."[687] How are we to reconcile two statements made by Pitt
in the same speech, in January, 1776: "This kingdom has no right to
lay a tax on the colonies." "At the same time, on every real point of
legislation, I believe the authority of Parliament to be fixed as the
Polar Star." Without any attempt to conceive or fashion a definition of
their ideal, the good common sense of the patriots at last worked out
the conclusion that their emancipation from the Parliament involved a
dispensing with the king.[688]
There was no disguising the fact, however, that, with independence
declared, there was no such unanimity of purpose among all the members
of Congress, still less among their many-minded and vaguely-defined
constituency. It was inevitable, therefore, that both a degree of
arbitrariness towards halting and censorious objectors, and of harsh
severity towards open resistants, should henceforward characterize
the measures approved by the patriot leaders. There was a sagacious
moderation and prudence in the measures taken by Congress to conciliate
and reassure the half-hearted and the hesitating. For the final stand
had been taken that nothing short of an achieved independence should be
accepted as the issue.
The prime movers in the patriot cause continued to be the main workers
for it, and gradually reinforced themselves by new and effective
aiders. Astute and able men, well read in history and by no means
without knowledge of international law and the methods of diplomacy,
surveyed the field before them, provided for contingencies, and found
full scope for their wits and wisdom. When we consider the distractions
of the times, the overthrow of all previous authority, the presence
and threats of anarchy, the lack of unanimity, and the number and
virulence of discordant interests, and, above all, that Congress had
only advisory, hardly instructive, powers, even with the most willing
portion of its constituents, we can easily pardon excesses and errors,
and heartily yield our admiration to the noble qualities and virtues
of those who proved their claim to leadership. When we read the
original papers and the full biographies of these men, we are impressed
by the balance and force of their judgment, their power of expressing
reasons and convictions, their calm self-mastery, and the fervor of
their purposes.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
THE source to which naturally we should first apply ourselves for the
fullest information on the development of the purpose of independence
would be the _Journals of Congress_. But our disappointment would
be complete. The same reasons which enjoined on the members secrecy
as to the proceedings seem to have deprived the record even of some
things that were done and of almost every utterance in debate. We
have to look to other sources, the most scattered and fragmentary,
to learn the names even of the principal leaders in the debates, and
from beginning to end we have not the report, scarcely a summary, of a
single speech. Our reasonable inference from such hints is that some
ten, or at most fifteen, members were the master-spirits in securing
the adoption of measures, while they were opposed by some as earnest as
themselves, but not as numerous. But whatever may have been written in
the original _Journals_ was subjected to a cautious selection when they
were printed by a committee. It is only from Jefferson himself, for
instance, that we learn (Randall's _Jefferson_, i. 15) how, somewhat to
his chagrin, "the rhetoric" of his draft of the Declaration was toned
down. Especially do the _Journals_, as printed, suppress all evidences
of strong dissension, of which we have abundant hints in fragments from
John and Sam. Adams, Franklin, Dickinson, Galloway, Jefferson, Jay, and
Livingston. But the _Journals_ do spread before us at length sundry
admirable papers, drawn by able and judicious committees.[689]
The reader must turn to the notes appended to chapter i. of the present
volume for an examination of some of the leading pamphlets occasioned
by the Congresses of 1774 and 1775, and for an examination of their
opposing views, with more or less warning of the inevitable issue of
independence.
One may easily trace in the writings of Franklin, extending through
the years preceding the Revolution, and through all the phases of the
struggle, seeming inconsistencies in the expression of his opinions
and judgment. But these are readily explicable by changes in time and
circumstance. We must pause, however, upon the strong statement made
by Lecky in the following sentence: "It may be safely asserted that if
Franklin had been able to guide American opinion, it would never have
ended in revolution."[690]
Opportune in the date of its publication, as well as of mighty cogency
in its tone and substance, was that vigorous work by Thomas Paine,
a pamphlet bearing the title "Common Sense." If we take merely the
average between the superlatively exalted tributes paid to his work as
the one supremely effective agency for bringing vast numbers of the
people of the colonies to front the issue of independence, and the
most moderate judgments which have estimated its real merit, we should
leave to be assigned to it the credit of being the most inspiriting of
all the utterances and publications of the time for popular effect.
The opportuneness of the appearance of this remarkable essay consisted
in the fact that it came into the hands of multitudes, greedy to read
it, a few months before the burning question of independency was to
be settled. The papers issued by Congress might well answer the needs
of the most intelligent classes of the people, in reconciling them to
the new phase of the struggle. But there were large numbers of persons
who needed the help of some short and easy argument, homely in style
and quotable between plain neighbors. And this eighteen-penny pamphlet
met that necessity. It appeared anonymously. John Adams says it was
ascribed to his pen. Paine had been in confidential intercourse with
Franklin, and the sagacious judgment of that philosopher doubtless
suggested the form and substance of some of its contents, and may have
kept out of it some things less apt or wise. Washington, Franklin,
and John Adams welcomed it as a vigorous agency for persuading masses
of simple and honest men that their rights must now be taken into
their own hands for vindication. The character of the writer alienated
from him the regard of those who could and who would willingly have
advanced his interests, and made him to multitudes an object of horror
and contempt. Though his pamphlet bore the title of "Common Sense",
Gouverneur Morris says that that was a quality which Paine himself
wholly lacked. Posterity, however, may well accord to him as a writer
the high consideration given to him by his contemporaries, of having
happily met by his pen a crisis and a pause in the state of the popular
mind. Franklin wrote that "the pamphlet had prodigious effects."[691]
Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was published in the same year. Wise
men have often affirmed that if it had appeared a generation earlier,
and if the doctrines and principles which it advocated had passed into
the minds of statesmen and economists, peaceful rather than warlike
measures would have disposed of the controversy. It required the
lapse of twoscore years to convince English statesmen and economists
of the practical wisdom of the leading principles advanced by this
college professor. He maintained the general viciousness and folly of
the English colonial administration; that while even the restricted
commercial monopoly was more generous than the colonial rule of any
other governments, the prohibition of manufactures was mischievous and
oppressive. He agreed with Dean Tucker, that a peaceful separation of
the colonies would benefit rather than harm the mother country. Yet,
under existing circumstances, such a separation was impracticable,
because neither the government nor the people of the realm would
seriously entertain the proposition.[692]
One of the best expositions of the views held by some of the Tory
writers, that the seeds of independency were sown with the early
settlements and nurtured through their history, is given in a tract by
Galloway,[693] which was published in London in 1780, as _Historical
and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American
Rebellion. In which the Causes of that Rebellion are pointed out, and
the Policy and Necessity of offering to the Americans a System of
Government founded in the Principles of the British Constitution, are
clearly demonstrated. By the Author of Letters to a Nobleman on the
Conduct of the American War_. He pleads that the rebellion has been
encouraged by the assertion "of the injustice and oppression of the
present reign by a plan formed by the administration for enslaving
the colonies", and asserts that the mother country had fostered the
infancy and weakness of the colonies, had espoused their quarrels,
and, at an enormous cost of debt, had defended them. "The colonies are
very rich and prosperous, with more than a quarter of the population
of Great Britain, and should share its burdens. The rebellion did not
spring from a dread of being enslaved." The writer then ably and justly
traces its origin to the principles of the Puritan exiles, from whose
passion for religious freedom has grown that for civil independence.
He attributes much influence helpful to rebellion to the organization
among the Presbyterians at Philadelphia, in 1764, which united by
correspondence with the Congregationalists of New England. The other
sects were generally averse to measures of violent opposition to
authority. The measures of government are vindicated, and all trouble
is traced to a faction in New England, sympathized with and led on by a
similar faction at home. The "Circular Letter", bringing the colonies
into accord, wrought the mischief. Two sharply divided parties at once
were formed, or proved to exist: the one defining and standing for the
right of the colonies with a redress of grievances, on the basis of
a solid constitutional union with the mother country, and opposed to
sedition and all acts of violence; the other resolved by all means,
even though covert and fraudulent, to throw off allegiance, appeal
to arms, run the venture of anarchy, and assert, and if possible
attain, independence. The latter party, acting with some temporary
reserve and caution, opposed all peaceable propositions, and covertly
worked for their own ends. They used most effectively a system of
expresses between Philadelphia and the other towns, Sam. Adams being
the artful and diligent fomenter of all this mischief. By his guile,
Congress was brought to approve the Resolves of the Mass. Suffolk
Conference, which declared "that no obedience is due to acts of
Parliament affecting Boston", and provided for an organization of the
provincial militia against government. He proceeded to argue that "the
American faction", as in the fourth resolve of their Bill of Rights,
explicitly declare their colonial independence. This was followed by
an address to his majesty,—not calling it a petition,—and which
the writer proceeded to analyze with much acuteness, as being vague
and evasive in its professions, and suggestive of conditions which
would prove satisfactory. Finally, "the mask was thrown off", and the
casting vote of the "timid and variable Mr. Dickinson" carried the
Declaration of Independence. "Samuel Adams, the great director of their
councils, and the most cautious, artful, and reserved man among them,
did not hesitate, as soon as the vote of independence had passed, to
declare in all companies that he had labored upwards of twenty years
to accomplish the measure." Mr. Galloway closes with sharp strictures
upon the bewildered and vacillating policy which the government has
heretofore pursued, and pleads for a firm and generous "constitutional
union" between the realm and the colonies. The growth of the spirit of
independence necessarily makes a part of all general histories of the
war, which are characterized in another place.
[Illustration]
EDITORIAL NOTES.
THE claim of Chalmers that the passion for independence had latently
existed from the very foundation of the New England colonies[694] had
been early denied by Dummer in his _Defence of the N. E. Charters_.
John Adams[695] had been outspoken in his advocacy of independence
for more than a year before R. H. Lee introduced his resolution into
Congress. He had avowed it in letters, which the British intercepted in
July, 1775, and printed in a Boston newspaper. If Josiah Quincy, Jr.
(_Memoirs_, 250, 341), can be believed, he found Franklin in London in
1774 holding ideas "extended on the broad scale of total emancipation"
(Sparks's _Franklin_, i. 379). The resolves of Mecklenburg County in
North Carolina, in May, 1775, were strongly indicative. John Jay traced
the beginning of an outspoken desire to the rejection by the king of
the petition of the Congress of 1775 (_N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._,
July, 1776). In the autumn of that year it is certain that the passion
for independence animated the army round Boston (Frothingham's _Siege
of Boston_, 263), and in December James Bowdoin was confident that
the dispute must end in independence (_Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, xii.
228). There was very far from any general adhesion to the belief in its
inevitableness at all times during 1775. Washington was not conscious
of the wish (Sparks, i. 131, ii. 401; Smyth, ii. 457). Gov. Franklin
was expressing to Dartmouth the prevalence of a detestation of such
views (_Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, xiv 342). The English historians have
dwelt on this (Mahon, vi. 92, 94; Lecky, iii. 414, 447, iv. 41).[696]
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPHS OF THE MECKLENBURG COMMITTEE, MAY 31, 1775.
From the plate in W. D. Cooke's _Rev. Hist. of No. Carolina_, p.
64. Cf. Lossing's _Field-Book_, ii. 619, for another fac-simile and
accounts of the signers; also see C. L. Hunter, _Sketches of Western
North Carolina_ (Raleigh, 1877, p. 39). It has been strenuously claimed
and denied that, at a meeting of the people of Mecklenburg County, in
North Carolina, on May 20, 1775, resolutions were passed declaring
their independence of Great Britain. The facts in the case appear to be
these:—On the 31st of May, 1775, the people of this county did pass
resolutions quite abreast of the public sentiment of that time, but not
venturing on the field of independency further than to say that these
resolutions were to remain in force till Great Britain resigned its
pretensions. These resolutions were well written, attracted notice,
and were copied into the leading newspapers of the colonies, North and
South, and can be found in various later works (Lossing's _Field-Book_,
ii. 619, etc.). A copy of the _S. Carolina Gazette_ containing them
was sent by Governor Wright, of Georgia, to Lord Dartmouth, and was
found by Bancroft in the State Paper Office, while in the _Sparks
MSS._ (no. lvi.) is the record of a copy sent to the home government
by Governor Martin of North Carolina, with a letter dated June 30,
1775. Of these resolutions there is no doubt (Frothingham's _Rise of
the Republic_, p. 422). In 1793, or earlier, some of the actors in the
proceeding, apparently ignorant that the record of these resolutions
had been preserved in the newspapers, endeavored to supply them from
memory, unconsciously intermingling some of the phraseology of the
Declaration of July 4th in Congress, which gave them the tone of a
pronounced independency. Probably through another dimness of memory
they affixed the date of May 20, 1775, to them. These were first
printed in the _Raleigh Register_, April 30, 1819. They are found to
resemble in some respects the now known resolves of May 31st, as well
as the national Declaration in a few phrases. In 1829 Martin printed
them, much altered, in his _North Carolina_ (ii. 272), but it is not
known where this copy came from. In 1831 the State printed the text of
the 1819 copy, and fortified it with recollections and certificates
of persons affirming that they were present when the resolutions were
passed on the 20th: _The Declaration of Independence by the Citizens
of Mecklenburg County, N. C., on the twentieth day of May, 1775, with
documents, and proceedings of the Cumberland Association_ (Raleigh,
1831). This report of the State Committee is printed also in 4 Force,
ii. 855. The resolves are reprinted in _Niles's Reg._ (1876, p. 313);
in Caldwell's _Greene_; in Lossing (ii. 622), and in other places.
Frothingham says he has failed to find any contemporary reference in
manuscript or print to these May 20th resolutions. Jefferson (_Memoir
and Corresp._, iv. 322; Randall's _Jefferson_, 1858, vol. iii. App. 2)
denied their authenticity, and J. S. Jones supported their genuineness
in his _Defence of the Revolutionary History of North Carolina_
(Boston, 1834). In 1847 Rev. Thomas Smith, in his _True Origin and
Source of the Mecklenburgh and National Declaration of Independence_,
agreed to the priority of the May 20th resolutions, but thought that
both those and the national Declaration were drawn in part from the
ordinary covenants of the Scottish Presbyterians,—hence agreeing
naturally in some of their phraseology.
The principal attempts to sustain the authenticity of the resolutions
of May 20th are F. L. Hawks's lecture in W. D. Cooke's _Revolutionary
Hist. of North Carolina_, and W. A. Grahame's _Hist. Address on the
Mecklenburg Centennial at Charlotte, N. C._ (N. Y. 1875). The adverse
view, held generally by students, is best expressed in J. C. Welling's
paper in the _No. Amer. Rev._, April, 1874, and in H. B. Grigsby's
_Discourse on the Virginia Convention of 1776_ (p. 21). John Adams
was surprised on their production in 1819 (_Works_, x. 380-83). Cf.
further in Moore's _North Carolina_, i. 187; _No. Carolina Univ.
Mag._, May, 1853; Bancroft's _United States_, orig. ed., vii. 370,
and final revision, iv. 196, and also in _Hist. Mag._, xii. 378;
Gay's _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 474; Lossing's _Field-Book_, ii. 619;
Johnson's _Traditions and Reminiscences of the Amer. Rev. in the South_
(Charleston, 1851, p. 76); _Amer. Hist. Rec._, iii. 200; _Mag. of Amer.
Hist._, July, 1882, p. 507; _Southern Lit. Messenger_, v. 417, 748.
The antedating of the Congressional Declaration of July 4, 1776,
by local bodies, stirred beyond a wise prudence, might well have
happened in days when the air was full of such feelings; but they
were of little effect, except the Suffolk Resolves of Sept. 6, 1774,
which were adopted by the Congress of 1774. Perhaps the earliest of
these ebullitions were some votes passed by the town of Mendon, in
Massachusetts, in 1773 (_Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1870). A
fac-simile of the record is given in Gay's _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii.
472.]
Early in 1776 the passion for independence gathered head. In March,
Edmund Quincy thought the feeling was universal in the Northern
colonies (_N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, 1859, p. 232). Francis
Dana, just home from England, was saying that he was satisfied no
reconciliation was possible (Sparks, _Corresp. of the Rev._, i. 177).
The probability of independence was recognized in the instructions
which Congress gave to Silas Deane in March, on his sailing for Europe.
In April came the violent measure in Congress of abolishing the British
custom laws. The press was beginning to give the warning note,[697]
but not without an occasional counter statement, as when the _N. Y.
Gazette_ (April 8, 1776) asserted that Congress had never lisped a
desire for republicanism or independence. Sam Adams was urgent (Wells,
ii. 397). John Adams was writing to Winthrop, of Cambridge, to restrain
him from urging Massachusetts to break precipitately the union of the
colonies (_Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, xliv. 298), and he was counselling
Joseph Ward to be patient, for it "required time to bring the colonies
all of one mind; but", he adds, "time will do it" (_Scribner's Mag._,
xi. 572).
May was the decisive month, and events marched rapidly. On the 1st,
Massachusetts set up a committee to conduct the government of the
province in the name of the people.[698] On the 4th the last Colonial
Assembly of Rhode Island renounced its allegiance (_Newport Hist.
Mag._, Jan., 1884, p. 131). A letter of Gen. Lee to Patrick Henry, on
May 7th, has raised a doubt of Henry's steadfastness (Force, 5th ser.,
i. 95), but Henry assisted in that vote of the Virginia Convention,
on the 15th, which instructed its representatives in Congress to
move a vote of independence.[699] R. H. Lee wrote to Charles Lee
that "the proprietary colonies do certainly obstruct and perplex the
American machine."[700] Dickinson, as representing these proprietary
governments, saw something different from independency in John Adams's
motion of May 15th, that "the several colonies do establish governments
of their own;" but when that vote had passed, Adams and everybody else,
as he says, considered it was a practical throwing off of allegiance,
and rendered the formal declaration of July 4th simply necessary.[701]
Hawley and Warren now wrote to Sam Adams, inquiring why this hesitancy
in declaring what even now exists? (Wells, ii. 393); and Winthrop urges
the same question upon John Adams (_Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, xliv. 306).
[Illustration: THOMAS JEFFERSON. (_After picture owned by T. J.
Coolidge, of Boston._)
After a painting in monochrome by Stuart, which was formerly at
Monticello, and is now owned by Jefferson's great-grandson, T.
Jefferson Coolidge, of Boston. It was painted during Jefferson's
presidency. An engraving from a copy owned by Mrs. John W. Burke, of
Alexandria, Va., is given in John C. Fremont's _Memoirs of my Life_,
vol. i. p. 12 (N. Y., 1887). A portrait of Jefferson, three quarters
length, sitting, with papers in his lap, was painted for John Adams by
M. Brown, and is engraved in Bancroft's _United States_, orig. ed.,
vol. viii. A picture by Neagle is engraved in Delaplaine's _Repository_
(1835). The profile by Memin is in Gay's _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 484.
There are various likenesses by Stuart: a full-face and a profile,
owned by T. Jefferson Coolidge, of Boston,—the profile is mentioned
above, and the full-face is one of a series of the Five Presidents, and
it has been engraved in Higginson's _Larger History_; a full-length,
belonging to the heirs of Col. T. J. Randolph, of Edgehill, Va.
(engraved in stipple by D. Edwin); and other pictures in the Capitol,
in the White House, at Bowdoin College, and in the possession of
Edw. Coles, of Philadelphia (engraved by J. B. Forrest). The picture
engraved in Sanderson's _Signers_, vii., is a Stuart. A photogravure,
made of the one at Bowdoin College, is given in an account of the art
collections there, issued by the college.
Lossing, in a paper on "Monticello", Jefferson's home, in _Harper's
Mag._, vol. vii., pictures some of the memorials of Jefferson (cf.
also _Scribner's Monthly_, v. 148), and adds views of the houses of
other signers of the Declaration. This is done also by Brotherhead
in his _Book of the Signers_, together with rendering in fac-simile
autograph papers of each of them. Cf. J. E. Cooke on Jefferson in
_Harper's Mag._, liii. p. 211; and also "The Virginia Declaration of
Independence, or a group of Virginia Statesmen", with various cuts,
in the _Mag. of Amer. History_, May, 1884, p. 369, giving portraits
of Archibald Cary, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, R. H. Lee, Geo.
Mason, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Benj. Harrison, Edmund Randolph, James
Madison, with views also of Gunston Hall (Mason's home), Henry's
house, Harrison's mansion of Berkeley, and of the old Raleigh tavern,
associated with the patriots' meetings.]
As the debates went on, reassuring notes came from New England in
respect to the Virginia resolutions. Connecticut took action on June
14th (Hinman's _Connecticut during the Rev._, 94). Langdon wrote
from New Hampshire, June 26th, that he knew of none who would oppose
it (_Hist. Mag._, vi. 240). The vote of July 2d finished the issue.
Honest belief, intimidation, a run for luck, and more or less of
self-interest[702] had made the colonies free on paper, and compelled
anew the conflict which was to make their pretensions good.
[Illustration: STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA, 1778.
This view of the building in which Congress sat is from the _Columbian
Magazine_, July, 1787. Cf. Scharf and Westcott's _Philadelphia_, i.
322, and Egle's _Pennsylvania_, p. 186; _Harper's Mag._, iii. 151. An
architect's drawing of the front is on a folding sheet in _A new and
complete Hist. of the Brit. Empire in America_ (London, 1757?). Cf.
other views in Lossing's _Field-Book_, ii. 272, 288. A water-color view
by R. Peale is now preserved in the building. Cf. Belisle's _Hist. of
Independence Hall_; Col. F. M. Etting's _Memorials of 1776_, his _Hist.
of the Old State House_ (1876), and his paper in the _Penn Monthly_,
iii. 577; Lossing and others in _Potter's Amer. Monthly_, vi. 379,
455, vii. 1, 67, 477; John Savage's illustrated article in _Harper's
Monthly_, xxxv. p. 217. Between 1873 and 1875 the hall was restored
nearly to its ancient appearance, and now has some of the furniture
in it used at the time of the Declaration. Cf. view in Gay, iii.
481, and Higginson's _Larger Hist._, 278. It has become a museum to
commemorate the Revolutionary characters. The reports of the committee
of restoration were printed. Cf. Scharf and Westcott, i. 318, and
Col. Etting's _History;_ also B. P. Poore's _Descriptive Catal. of
Government Publications_, p. 945.
For the conditions of living in Philadelphia, and the appearance of the
town at this time and during the war, see _Watson's Annals_; Scharf
and Westcott's _Philadelphia_ (ch. xvi., 1765-1776, xvii., 1776-1778,
xviii., 1778-1783); Henry C. Watson's _Old Bell of Independence_
(Philad., 1852,—later known as _Noble Deeds of our Forefathers_);
R. H. Davis in _Lippincott's Mag._ (July, 1876), xviii. 27, and in
_Harper's Monthly_, lii. pp. 705, 868; and F. D. Stone on "Philadelphia
Society a hundred years ago, or the reign of Continental money." in
_Penna. Mag. of Hist._, iii. 361. The diaries of Christopher Marshall
(Albany, 1877) and of James Allen (_Penna. Mag. of Hist._, July, 1885,
pp. 176, 278, 424) are of importance in this study.]
[Illustration: ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
This reproduces only the sentences near the beginning in the
handwriting of Thomas Jefferson, showing his corrections. Later in
the manuscript there are corrections, of no great extent, in the
handwriting of John Adams and Benj. Franklin. The original paper is
in the Patent Office at Washington, and is printed in Jefferson's
_Writings_, i. 26; in Randall's _Jefferson_; in the _Declaration of
Independence_ (Boston, 1876, published by the city), where is also a
reduced fac-simile of the engraved document as signed. Cf. Guizot's
_Washington_, Atlas. Lossing (_Field-Book_, ii. 281) gives a fac-simile
of a paragraph nearly all of which was omitted in the final draft,
as was the paragraph respecting slavery (Jefferson's _Memoir and
Corresp._, i. p. 16). A letter of Jefferson to R. H. Lee, July 8, 1776,
accompanying the original draft, showing the changes made by Congress,
is in Lee's _Life of R. H. Lee_, i. 275. For accounts of various
early drafts, and for John Adams's instrumentality in correcting it,
see C. F. Adams's _John Adams_, i. 233, ii. 515. Cf. also Parton's
_Jefferson_, ch. 21; and his _Franklin_, ii. 126. John Adams contended
that the essence of it was in earlier tracts of Otis and Sam. Adams
(_Works_, ii. 514).
On the literary character of the document, see Greene's _Historical
View_, p. 382; the lives of Jefferson by Tucker, Parton, Randall,
John T. Morse, Jr. The similarity of the preamble of the Constitution
of Virginia and certain parts of the Declaration have been taken to
show that Jefferson plagiarized (_New York Review_, no. 1), but the
testimony of a letter of George Wythe to Jefferson, July 27, 1776,
seems to make it clear that Jefferson was the writer of that part of
the Constitution, though Geo. Mason formed the body of it. Cf. also
Wirt's _Patrick Henry_ and Tucker's _Jefferson_.
The text of the Declaration as Jefferson originally wrote it will be
found in Randall's _Jefferson_, p. 172; Niles's _Weekly Register_, July
3, 1813; Timothy Pickering's _Review of the Cunningham Correspondence_
(1824), the _Madison Papers_. These copies do not always agree, since
different drafts were followed. It is given, with changes indicated as
made by Congress, in Jefferson's _Works_, i.; Russell's _Life and Times
of Fox_; Lee's _R. H. Lee_. John Adams (_Works_, ii. 511) gives the
reasons why Jefferson was put at the head of the committee for drafting
the Declaration (_Potter's American Monthly_, vii. 191).
[Illustration]
Trumbull's well-known picture of the committee presenting the
Declaration in Congress was made known through A. B. Durand's engraving
in 1820. The medals commemorating the event are described in Baker's
_Medallic Portraits of Washington_, p. 32. The house in Philadelphia
in which Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence is shown
in Scharf and Westcott's _Philadelphia_ (i. 320); Watson's _Annals
of Philadelphia_ (iii.); Brotherhead's _Signers_ (1861, p. 110);
_Potter's American Monthly_, vi. 341; Gay's _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii.
483; Higginson's _Larger Hist. U. S._, 274. The desk on which he wrote
it was for a long time in the possession of Mr. Joseph Coolidge of
Boston, and at his death passed by his will to the custody of Congress.
Randall's _Jefferson_, i. 177; _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, iii. 151.]
The resolutions of independency of June 7th, introduced by R. H.
Lee, in accordance with instructions from Virginia,[703] are not
preserved either in the MS. or printed journals, and John Adams tells
us (_Works_, iii. 45) much was purposely kept out of the records;
but they have been found in the secretary's files, and are given in
fac-simile in Force (4th ser., vi. p. 1700). Of the proceedings and
debates which followed we have, beside the printed journals (i. 365,
392), three manuscript journals.[704] For details we must go to the
memoranda made by Jefferson from notes taken near the time.[705]
There seems no doubt that John Adams was the leading advocate of the
Declaration[706] and such traces as are found of other speakers are
noted in Bancroft, orig. ed., viii. 349; Wells's _Sam. Adams_, ii.
413, 433; Randall's _Jefferson_, i. 182. Bancroft draws John Adams's
character with some vigor (viii. 309). Dickinson made the main speech
against Adams. Bancroft abridges it from Dickinson's own report (viii.
452); Ramsay (i. 339) sketched it. (Cf. Niles's _Principles_, 1876,
p. 400, and _John Adams's Works_, iii. 54.) Adams thought Dickinson's
printed speech very different from the one delivered. Galloway, in his
_Examination_ before Parliament, gave only the flying rumors of what
passed. The later writers summarize the debates and proceedings.[707]
There is some confusion in later days in the memory of participants,
by which the decision for independence on July 2d is not kept quite
distinct from the formal expression of it on July 4th. (Cf. McKean in
_John Adams_, x. 88.)
It was the New York, and not the New Jersey, delegates who were not
instructed to vote for the Declaration (Wells, i. 226). The position of
New York is explained by W. L. Stone in _Harper's Mag._, July, 1883.
The instructions from Pennsylvania and Delaware came late.[708]
[Illustration: ROGER SHERMAN
After a painting owned by a descendant in New Haven. Cf. portrait by
Earle in Sanderson's _Signers_ in Brotherhead's _Book of Signers_
(1861), p. 75, will be found a view of his house. He was of the
Committee to draft the Declaration of Independence.]
Notwithstanding that the statements of both Jefferson (_Writings_,
Boston, 1830, vol. i. 20, etc.) and Adams, made at a later day
(_Autobiography_), and the printed _Journals of Congress_, seem to the
effect that the Declaration was signed by the members present on July
4, 1776, it is almost certain that such was not the case.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
NOTE.—These four plates show the signatures of the signers (now very
much faded in the original document), arranged not as they signed,
but in the order of States, beginning with Massachusetts and ending
with Georgia. The signatures were really attached in six columns,
containing respectively 3, 7, 12 (John Hancock heading this one), 12,
9, 13,—as is shown in a reduced fac-simile of the entire document as
signed, given in _The Declaration of Independence_ (Boston, 1876).
The signatures are also given in Sanderson's _Signers_, vol. i.;
in _Harper's Mag._, iii. 158, etc. The formation of a set of the
autographs of the "Signers" is, or rather has been, called the test
of successful collecting. The signatures of Thomas Lynch, Jr., Button
Gwinnett, and Lyman Hall are said to be the rarest. The Rev. Dr. Wm. B.
Sprague is said to have formed three sets; but these collections, as
well as those of Raffles, of Liverpool, and Tefft, of Savannah, have
changed hands.
[Illustration]
The finest is thought to belong to Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of New York.
The set of Col. T. B. Myers is described in the _Hist. Mag._, 1868.
One was sold in the Lewis J. Cist collection in N. Y., Oct., 1886 (p.
47). It has been said that "of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration
of Independence, nine were born in Massachusetts, eight in Virginia,
five in Maryland, four in Connecticut, four in New Jersey, four in
Pennsylvania, four in South Carolina, three in New York, three in
Delaware, two in Rhode Island, one in Maine, three in Ireland, two in
England, two in Scotland, and one in Wales. Twenty-one were attorneys,
ten Merchants, four physicians, three farmers, one clergyman, one
printer; sixteen were men of fortune. Eight were graduates of Harvard
College, four of Yale, three of New Jersey, two of Philadelphia, two of
William and Mary, three of Cambridge, England, two of Edinburgh, and
one of St. Omers.
[Illustration]
At the time of their deaths, five were over ninety years of age, seven
between eighty and ninety, eleven between seventy and eighty, twelve
between sixty and seventy, eleven between fifty and sixty, seven
between forty and fifty; one died at the age of twenty-seven, and the
age of two is uncertain. At the time of signing the Declaration, the
average of the members was forty-four years. They lived to the average
age of more than sixty-five years and ten months. The youngest member
was Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, who was in his twenty-seventh
year. He lived to the age of fifty-one. The next youngest member was
Thomas Lynch, of the same State, who was also in his twenty-seventh
year. He was cast away at sea in the fall of 1776. Benjamin Franklin
was the oldest member. He was in his seventy-first year when he signed
the Declaration. He died in 1790, and survived sixteen of his younger
brethren. Stephen Hopkins, of Rhode Island, the next oldest member, was
born in 1707, and died in 1785. Charles Carroll attained the greatest
age, dying in his ninety-sixth year. William Ellery, of Rhode Island,
died in his ninety-first year." The standard collected edition of their
lives is a work usually called Sanderson's _Biography of the signers of
the declaration of independence_ (Philadelphia, 1820-27, in 9 vols.)
_Contents._—1. View of the British colonies from their origin to their
independence; John Hancock, by John Adams. 2. Benjamin Franklin, by J.
Sanderson; George Wythe, by Thomas Jefferson; Francis Hopkinson, by R.
Penn Smith; Robert Treat Paine, by Alden Bradford. 3. Edward Rutledge,
by Arthur Middleton; Lyman Hall, by Hugh McCall; Oliver Wolcott,
by Oliver Wolcott, Jr.; Richard Stockton, by H. Stockton; Button
Gwinnett, by Hugh McCall; Josiah Bartlett, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Philip
Livingston, by De Witt Clinton; Roger Sherman, by Jeremiah Evarts. 4.
Thomas Heyward, by James Hamilton; George Read, by —— Read; William
Williams, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Samuel Huntington, by Robert Waln, Jr.;
William Floyd, by Augustus Floyd; George Walton, by Hugh McCall; George
Clymer, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Benjamin Rush, by John Sanderson. 5.
Thomas Lynch, Jr., by James Hamilton; Matthew Thornton, by Robert Waln,
Jr.; William Whipple, by Robert Waln, Jr.; John Witherspoon, by Ashbel
Green; Robert Morris, by Robert Waln, Jr. 6. Arthur Middleton, by H. M.
Rutledge; Abraham Clark, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Francis Lewis, by Morgan
Lewis; John Penn, by John Taylor; James Wilson, by Robert Waln, Jr.;
Carter Braxton, by Judge Brackenborough; John Morton, by Robert Waln,
Jr.; Stephen Hopkins, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Thomas M'Kean, by Robert
Waln, Jr. 7. Thomas Jefferson, by H. D. Gilpin; William Hooper, by J.
C. Hooper; James Smith, by Edward Ingersoll; Charles Carroll, by H. B.
Latrobe; Thomas Nelson, Jr., by H. D. Gilpin; Joseph Hewes, by Edward
Ingersoll. 8. Elbridge Gerry, by H. D. Gilpin; Cæsar Rodney, by H. D.
Gilpin; Benjamin Harrison, by H. D. Gilpin; William Paca, by Edward
Ingersoll; George Ross, by H. D. Gilpin; John Adams, by E. Ingersoll.
9. Richard Henry Lee, by R. H. Lee; George Taylor, by H. D. Gilpin;
John Hart, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Lewis Morris, by E. Ingersoll; Thomas
Stone, by E. Ingersoll; Francis L. Lee, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Samuel
Chase, by E. Ingersoll; William Ellery, by H. D. Gilpin; Samuel Adams,
by H. D. Gilpin.
Vols. 1, 2 were edited by John Sanderson; the remainder by Robert Waln,
Jr. A list of the authors of the different biographies is given in the
_Massachusetts Historical Society's Proceedings_, xv. 393. There was a
second edition, revised, improved, and enlarged (Philadelphia, 1828,
in 5 vols.). An edition revised by Robert T. Conrad was published in
Philadelphia in 1865.
An enumeration of books which grew out of Sanderson's _Signers_ is
given in Foster's _Stephen Hopkins_, ii. 183. Much smaller books are
Charles A. Goodrich's _Lives of the Signers_ (New York, 1829), and
there are other collections of brief memoirs by L. C. Judson (1829) and
Benson J. Lossing. Cf. also papers by Lossing in _Harper's Mag._, iii.,
vii., and xlviii., and his _Field-Book_, ii. 868.
A fac-simile of the engrossed document as signed is given in _The
Declaration of Independence_ (Boston, 1876), and others are in Force's
_Amer. Archives_, 5th ser., i. 1595; and one was published in N. Y.
in 1865. The earliest fac-simile is one engraved on copper by Peter
Maverick, of which there are copies on vellum, as well as on paper. It
is called _Declaration of Independence, copied from the Original in the
Department of State and published, by Benjamin Owen Tyler, Professor
of Penmanship. The publisher designed and executed the ornamental
writing and has been particular to copy the Facsimilies exact, and has
also observed the same punctuation, and copied every Capital as in the
original_ (Washington, 1818).
[Illustration
NOTE.—The cut on this page is a reduction of a broadside issued in
Boston, of which there is a copy in the library of the Mass. Hist.
Society, where there are copies of similar broadsides issued in
Philadelphia and Salem. The fac-simile given in Gay's _Pop. Hist. U.
S._ (iii. 483) is of the Boston broadside without the imprint at the
bottom of the sheet. The first impression made for Congress was printed
at Philadelphia by John Dunlap, and the copy sent to Washington is
in the library of the State Department. It was also later printed in
broadside at "Baltimore in Maryland, by Mary Katharine Goddard", and
those of the copies which I have seen, as attested by Hancock and
Thomson in their own hands, in addition to the printed signatures, and
sent to the several States by order of Congress, Jan. 18, 1777, are
of this Baltimore imprint. Such a copy is in the _Mass. Archives_,
cxlii. 23, together with the letter of Hancock transmitting it to
that State. There is another copy, similarly attested, in the Boston
Public Library; and a reduced fac-simile of such a copy, with its
attestations, is given in the _Orderly-book of Sir John Johnson_ (p.
220). It was generally, I think, inscribed on the records of the
several States, and I have seen it in the records of the towns in
New England. (Cf. _N. H. State Papers_, viii. 200.) It is copied as
it appeared in the _Penna. Journal_, July 10th, in Moore's _Diary
of the Rev._, i. 262; and in England it was reprinted in _Almon's
Remembrancer_, iii. 258; _Annual Register_, 1776, p. 261; and in the
_Gentleman's Mag._, Aug., 1776.
The earliest authorized reprint in any collection appeared at
Philadelphia in 1781, in _The Constitutions of the several States
of America; The Declaration of Independence; The Articles of
Confederation; The Treaties between his most Christian Majesty and
the United States of America. Published by order of Congress_ (Sabin,
iv. 16,086, who says 200 copies were printed, and who gives various
other early editions). The Rev. William Jackson edited at London, in
1783, _The constitutions of the independent states of America; the
declaration of independence; and the articles of confederation. Added,
the declaration of rights, non-importation agreement, and petition of
Congress to the King. With appendix, containing treaties._ It can be
found in Bancroft, viii. 467; H. W. Preston's _Documents illustrating
American History_; Sherman's _Governmental Hist. U. S._, p. 615;
Frothingham's _Rise of the Republic_, p. 539; and in very many other
collections and places.]
[Illustration: JOHN DICKINSON.
From Du Simitière's _Thirteen Portraits_ (London, 1783). Cf. _Heads of
illustrious Americans_ (London, 1783). The usual portrait is given in
Higginson's _Larger History_, p. 270.]
McKean, in 1814, said it was not so,[709] and the best investigators of
our day are agreed that the president and secretary alone signed it on
that day, though Lossing, following Jefferson, has held that, though
signed on that day on paper by the members, it was in the nature of a
temporary authentication, and it did not preclude the more formal act
of signing it on parchment, which all are agreed was done on August
2d following. Thornton, of New Hampshire, signed as late as Nov. 4th;
and McKean, who was absent with the army, seems to have temporarily
returned so as to sign later in the year. Thornton's name appears in
the printed _Journal_ as attached to the Declaration on July 4th, and
McKean's is not, though McKean was present and Thornton was not. The
fact is, the printed _Journal_ is not a copy of the record of that day,
and was made up without due regard to the sequence of proceedings,
when prepared by a committee for the press in the early part of 1777.
There is in Force's _American Archives_ (4th ser., vol. vi. p. 1729)
a journal constructed by combining the original record (of which we
have no printed copy) and the minutes and documents of the official
files. From a collation of all these early records it appears that the
vote of January 18, 1777, ordering the Declaration to be printed with
the names attached,—then for the first time done,—made it convenient
to use this printed record in making the published _Journal_ entry
under July 4th. In this way the name of Thornton, who signed it even
subsequent to Aug. 2d, appears in that printed record as having been
put to the Declaration on July 4th. That any paper copy was signed
on July 4th is not believed, from the fact that no such copy exists;
and if it be claimed that it has been lost, there is still ground for
holding rather that it never existed, inasmuch as no vote is found for
any authentication except in the usual way, by Hancock and Thomson,
the president and secretary. McKean's criticism was the first to
confront the usual public belief of its being signed July 4th, as many
respectable writers have maintained since who preferred the authority
of the printed _Journal_ and of Jefferson and Adams. Such was Mahon's
preference, and Peter Force rather curtly criticised him for it, in
the _National Intelligencer_.[710] Force did not explain at length
the grounds of his assertions, and Mahon did not alter his statement
in a later edition; but a full explanation has been made by Mellen
Chamberlain in his _Authentication of the Declaration of Independence_
(Cambridge, 1885), which originally made part of the _Mass. Hist. Soc.
Proc._, Nov., 1884, p. 273. He gives full references.
The immediate effects of the Declaration in America are traced in
Frothingham's _Rise of the Republic_, p. 548. "No one can read", says
Wm. B. Reed in his _Life of Joseph Reed_ (i. p. 195), "the private
correspondence of the times without being struck with the slight
impression made on either the army or the mass of the people by the
Declaration of Independence."
The Declaration was, of course, at once commented on in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, in Almon's _Remembrancer_, and in the
other periodical publications. Hutchinson's _Strictures_ have been
mentioned. The ministry seem to have been behind the _Answer to the
Declaration of the American Congress_, referred to in a preceding
page, which was ostensibly written by John Lind and privately printed
in London in 1776, but was soon published without his name, appearing
in five different editions during the year, and was the next year
(1777) printed in French both in London and La Haye. In the earlier
edition the outline of a counter declaration was included (Sabin, x.
41,281-82). Lord Geo. Germaine is also said to have had a hand in
_The Rights of Great Britain asserted against the claims of America_,
which passed through three editions at least, the last with additions,
during 1776, beside being reprinted in Philadelphia (Hildeburn, no.
3,352). Sir John Dalrymple and James Macpherson are also thought to
have some share in it.[711] Lord Camden's views are given in Campbell's
_Lives of the Chancellors_ (v. 301). It soon became apparent that
the liberal party in England felt that the Declaration showed the
Americans determined to act without their continued assistance (Smyth's
_Lectures_, ii. 439). Bancroft (ix. ch. 3) traces the general effects
in Europe.[712]
The appearance, Jan. 8, 1776, of the _Common Sense_, written by
Thomas Paine, a stay-maker and sailor whom Franklin had accredited
when he came over in the summer of 1774, had produced a sudden effect
throughout the continent.[713]
[Illustration: JOHN HANCOCK. (_The Scott picture._)
Perkins (_Life and Works of Copley_, p. 70) notes three different
likenesses of Hancock, painted by that artist. The first represents him
sitting at a table, which bears an open book, upon which his left hand
lies, while the right holds a pen. This picture, formerly in Faneuil
Hall, is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The Copley head
has been engraved by I. B. Forrest and J. B. Longacre (_Sanderson's
Signers_), and there is a woodcut in the _Memorial Hist. of Boston_,
iv. p. 5, and another engraving of it in W. H. Bartlett's _United
States_, p. 343. Cf. Gay's _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 358. The German
picture from the _Geschichte der Kriege in und ausser Europa_ (Neunter
Theil, Nürnberg, 1777), of which a fac-simile is given herewith, is
evidently based on this picture, omitting the accessories. A similar
picture, with supports of cannon at the lower angles, is in Hilliard
d'Auberteuil's _Essais_, i. p. 152. It seems to have been the likeness
known on the continent of Europe, and is perhaps the one referred to
by John Adams, in writing to Spener, a Berlin bookseller, when he
says, "The portrait of Mr. Hancock has some resemblance in the dress
and figure, but none at all in the countenance" (_Works_, ix. 524).
The immediate prototype of the German picture may have been a London
engraving, described in Smith's _British Mezzotint Portraits_ as being
in an oval, with a short wig and tie at back, and professing to be
painted by Littleford, and published Oct. 25, 1775, by C. Shepherd,
which was one of a series of American portraits published in London
from 1775 to 1778, of which some, says that authority, were reëngraved
in Germany. The two other Copley pictures are described by Perkins as
being owned by Hancock's descendants: one an oval, showing him dressed
in blue coat laced with gold; the other a miniature on copper. There
is in the Bostonian Society a photograph of a picture owned by C. L.
Hancock. It will be remembered that Hancock's widow married Capt.
James Scott; and it is perhaps one of these Copley pictures that is
reproduced from an English print in J. C. Smith's _British Mezzotint
Portraits_, p. 1321, and shown in the present engraving (the Scott
picture), of which the original, an oval, bears this inscription:
"The Hon^{ble} John Hancock, Esq^r, late Governor of Boston in North
America, done from an original picture in the possession of Capt.
James Scott. Published by John Scott, No. 4, Middle Row, Holborn.
Copley pinx^t. W. Smith, sculp." Smith also gives another print, which
represents Hancock as standing, with the left hand in his pocket, the
other holding a letter addressed to "Mons. Monsieur Israel Putnam,
major general à Long Island." The face is much like the other.
The Copley head seems also to have been used in the sitting figure,
which appeared in the _Impartial History of the War in America_
(London, 1780, p. 207), of which a fac-simile is elsewhere given. The
same picture was reëngraved in even poorer manner in the Boston edition
of the book with the same title (1781, p. 346). Other contemporary
engravings are found in the _European Magazine_ (iv. p. 105); in the
_Royal American Magazine_ (March, 1774, reproduced in fac-simile in the
_Mem. Hist. Boston_, iii. 46); and in Murray's _Impartial History of
the present War_ (1778, vol. i. p. 144). Cf. Drake's _Tea Leaves_, p.
286.
The character of Hancock had pettinesses that have served to lower his
popular reputation, and this last is well reflected in the drawing
of his traits in Wells's _Sam. Adams_ (ii. 381). John Adams, whose
robustness of character was quite at variance with that of his friend,
was not blinded to sterling qualities in the rich man, who gave an
adherence to a cause that few of his position in Massachusetts did
(_John Adams's Works_, x. 259, 284). Adams's grandson speaks of the
biography of Hancock in Sanderson's _Signers_ as a curious specimen of
unfavorable judgment in the guise of eulogy, and a sketch by this same
grandson, C. F. Adams, is in the _Penna. Mag. of Hist._, p. 73, and a
memoir by G. Mountfort in Hunt's _American Merchants_, vol. ii. The
accounts in Loring's _Hundred Boston Orators_, p. 72, and by Gen. W. H.
Sumner in the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, April, 1854 (viii. 187),
are rambling antiquarian tales.]
[Illustration: JOHN HANCOCK. (_From the "Geschichte der Kriege."_)]
John Adams (_Works_, ii. 507; ix. 617) said of _Common Sense_ that it
embodied a "tolerable summary of the arguments for independence which
he had been speaking in Congress for nine months", and which Mahon
(vi. 96) has called "cogent arguments" "in clear, bold language;" but
Adams deemed unwise some of its suggestions for the governments of the
States, and to counteract their influence he published anonymously
his _Thoughts on Government_ (Philadelphia, 1776; Boston, 1776; often
since, and also in _Works_, iv. 193; ix. 387, 398), which he says met
the approval of no one of any consideration except Benjamin Rush. He
added his name to the second edition, and records that it soon had
due influence upon the Assemblies of the several States, when about
this time they adopted their constitutions. Adams's views were first
embodied in a letter to R. H. Lee, Nov. 15, 1775 (_Works_, iv. 185;
Sparks's _Washington_, ii., App.). What seems an anonymous reply
from a native of Virginia—that colony being then engaged in framing
a constitution—was _An address to the Convention of the Colony and
Ancient Dominion of Virginia_, which was an attempt to counteract the
tendency to popular features in government, which Adams had inculcated.
It is in Force, 4th ser., vi. 748, and was written by Carter Braxton
(Hildeburn's _Issues of the press in Pennsylvania_, Philad., 1886, no.
3,340).
[Illustration: CHARLES THOMSON.
From Du Simitière's _Thirteen Portraits_ (London, 1783). Cf. also
_Heads of illustrious Americans_ (London, 1783). There is a portrait
in the gallery of the Penna. Hist. Society. Scharf and Westcott's
_Philadelphia_ (i. 274, 275) gives his likeness and a view of his
house, and another picture of the house is in Brotherhead's _Signers_
(1861, p. 113). Cf. Lossing's _Field-Book_, ii. 267, and Potter's
_Amer. Monthly_, vi. 172, 264, vii. 161.]
Adams also wrote an amplified statement of some of his views to John
Penn, of North Carolina, which is given in John Taylor's _Inquiry into
the principles and policy of the Government of the United States_
(1814), and in Adams's _Works_, iv. 203.
The vote of Congress of May 15, 1776, had called upon the several
colonies to provide for independent governments, and Jameson
(_Constitutional Conventions_, N. Y., 1867, p. 112, etc.) summarizes
the actions of the several States.[714] New Hampshire was the first
to act, and Belknap in his _New Hampshire_, and the histories of the
other States, tell the story of their procedures. South Carolina was
the next, but Virginia was the earliest to form such a constitution
that it could last for many years. On June 12, 1776, she adopted her
famous Declaration of Rights, drawn by Geo. Mason,[715] and June 29th
perfected her constitution.[716] For New Jersey, see L. Q. C. Elmer's
_Hist. of the Constitution adopted in 1776 and of the government under
it_ (Newark, 1870, and in _N. J. Hist. Soc. Proc._, 2d ser., ii.
132), and the _Journal and votes and Proceedings of the Convention of
New Jersey_ (Burlington, 1776). For the movements in Pennsylvania,
see Reed's _Jos. Reed_, i. ch. 7; the _Proceedings relative to the
calling of the Conventions of 1776 and 1790_ (Harrisburg, 1825); Anna
H. Wharton's "Thomas Wharton, first governor of Pennsylvania", in the
_Penna. Mag. of Hist._, v. 426, vi. 91; and the biographies of the
members of the convention in the _Penna. Mag. of Hist._, iii. and iv.
The statements of the loyalist Jones in his _New York during the Rev._
(p. 321) are controverted by Johnston in his _Observations_ (p. 41).
[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL'S DIARY.
A page from Christopher Marshall's diary, preserved in the Penna. Hist.
Soc., giving his description of the public reading of the Declaration
of Independence, in Philadelphia, on July 8th. Cf. _Extracts from the
diary of Christopher Marshall kept in Philadelphia and Lancaster during
the American Revolution, 1774-1781, edited by Wm. Duane_ (Albany,
1877). On this reading, see _Penna. Mag. of Hist._, viii. 352, and W.
Sargent's _Loyal Verses of Stansbury and Odell_, p. 116.
The English notion of the way in which the proclamation was made may
be learned from Edward Bernard's contemporary folio _Hist. of England_
(p. 689), where a large print represents an uncovered man on horseback
reading a scroll to a crowd in the street, called "The manner in which
the American Colonies declared themselves independent of the King
of England throughout the different provinces on July 4, 1776." The
reading took place in New York July 9th (Bancroft, ix. 36), and in
Boston July 18th (_Mem. Hist. Boston_, iii. 183). Moore's _Diary of the
Rev._, i. (1776), records from contemporary journals the way in which
it was received in various places. A letter of Major F. Barber in the
_New Jersey Hist. Soc. Proc._, v., shows how the reception of the news
was observed at Fort Stanwix.]
For the convention in New York, see _Debates of the N. Y. Conventions_
(1821), App., p. 691; Flanders's _Life of Jay_, ch. 8; and Sparks's
_Gouverneur Morris_.[717] For Georgia, see C. C. Jones's _Georgia_,
ii. ch. 13. Jameson (p. 138) outlines the peculiar circumstances
of the early constitutional history of Vermont. Massachusetts was
the last (1780) of the original States to frame a constitution.
(See _John Adams's Works_, iv. 213; ix. 618.) Adams drafted the
constitution presented by the committee, which was printed as _Report
of a Constitution or form of government_,[718] and is printed without
embodying the Errata in _John Adams's Works_ (iv. 219), which copies it
from the Appendix of the _Journal of the Convention_ (Boston, 1832),
where it was also printed in that defective manner.[719]
John Adams, in his _Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the
United States of America_ (1787,—in _Works_, iv. 271), set forth the
views which influenced largely the framers of many of the constitutions
of the States. Connecticut and Rhode Island retained their original
charters through the war.
This action of the States rendered easier a plan of confederation,
which seems to have been proposed by Franklin as early as Aug. 21,
1775. On July 12, 1776, a plan in Dickinson's handwriting, based on
Franklin's, was reported, and was finally adopted by Congress, Nov. 15,
1777 (_Journals_, ii. 330), which was ratified by all the States in
1778 except Delaware (1779) and Maryland (1781), at which last date it
became obligatory on all.[720]
The reader needs to be cautioned against a publication which assumes
to be an _Oration delivered at the State House in Philadelphia Aug. 1,
1776_, by Samuel Adams (Philadelphia, reprinted at London, 1776), and
which was translated into French and German. It is reprinted in Wells,
iii., App. There is no copy of the pretended Philadelphia original
known, and the publication is a London forgery (Wells, ii. 439),
discoverable, if for no other reason, from the fact that its writer was
unaware that the Declaration of Independence had passed.