[Footnote 369: But though Mr. Dickenson had done more than any other man

in America to vindicate colonial rights and expose the unconstitutional

character of the acts of the British Ministry and Parliament, he was

opposed to a declaration of independence, like a majority of the

colonists; yet he advocated resistance by force against submission to

the Boston Port Bill, and the suspension of the Massachusetts Charter,

and both without a trial, as in similar cases even under the despotic

reigns of Charles the First and Second. Mr. Bancroft blames Mr.

Dickenson severely for the instructions of the Pennsylvania Legislature

to its nine delegates in the Continental Congress in October, 1775; but,

writing under the date of the previous May, Mr. Bancroft says: "Now that

the Charter of Massachusetts had been impaired, Dickenson did not ask

merely relief from parliamentary taxation; he required security against

the encroachments of Parliament on charters and laws. The distinctness

with which he spoke satisfied Samuel Adams himself, who has left on

record that the Farmer was a thorough Bostonian." (History of the United

States, Vol. VII., Chap. xxxvi., p. 377.)]

[Footnote 370: As late as May, 1775, after the bloody affair of Concord

and Lexington, Mr. Bancroft remarks:

"The delegates of New England, especially those from Massachusetts,

could bring no remedy to the prevailing indecision (in the Continental

Congress), for they suffered from insinuations that they represented a

people who were republican in their principles of government and

fanatics in religion, and they wisely avoided the appearance of

importunity or excess in their demands.

"As the delegates from South Carolina declined the responsibility of a

decision which would have implied an abandonment of every hope of peace,

there could be no efficient opposition to the policy of _again seeking

the restoration of American liberty through the mediation of the King_.

This plan had the great advantage over the suggestion of an immediate

separation from Britain, that it could be boldly promulgated, and was

_in harmony with the general wish; for the people of the continent_,

taken collectively, _had not as yet ceased to cling to their old

relations with their parent land_; and so far from scheming

independence, now that independence was become inevitable, they

postponed the irrevocable decree and still longed that the necessity for

it might pass by." (History of the United States, Vol. VII., Chap.

xxxvi, pp. 376, 377.)]

[Footnote 371: Lord Dartmouth (the Secretary of State for the Colonies)

said: "The attempts of General Gage at Concord are fatal. By that

unfortunate event the happy moment of advantage is lost."

"The condemnation of Gage was universal. Many people in England were

from that moment convinced that the Americans could not be reduced, and

that England must concede their independence. The British force, if

drawn together, could occupy but a few insulated points, while all the

rest would be free; if distributed, would be continually harassed and

destroyed in detail.

"These views were frequently brought before Lord North. That statesman

was endowed with strong affections, and was happy in his family, in his

fortune and abilities; in his public conduct, he and he alone among

Ministers was sensible to the reproaches of remorse; and he cherished

the sweet feelings of human kindness. Appalled at the prospect, he

wished to resign. But the King would neither give him release, nor

relent towards the Americans. How to subdue the rebels was the subject

of consideration." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VII.,

Chap, xxxiii, pp. 345, 346.)]

[Footnote 372: Frothingham's Rise of the American Republic, p. 453, in a

note.]

[Footnote 373: History of the United States, Vol. VIII., Chap, xlvii, p.

108.

In November, 1775, Jefferson wrote to a refugee: "It is an immense

misfortune to the whole empire to have a king of such a disposition at

such a time. We are told, and everything proves it true, that he is the

bitterest enemy we have; his Minister is able, and that satisfies me

that ignorance or wickedness somewhere controls him. Our petitions told

him, that from our King there was but one appeal. After colonies have

drawn the sword, there is but one step more they can take. That step is

now pressed upon us by the measures adopted, as if they were afraid we

would not take it. There is not in the British Empire a man who more

cordially loves union with Great Britain than I do; but by the God that

made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such

terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this I speak the

sentiments of America."--_Ib._, p. 143.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

1775 AND BEGINNING OF 1776--PREPARATION IN ENGLAND TO REDUCE THE

COLONISTS TO ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION--SELF-ASSERTED AUTHORITY OF PARLIAMENT.

The eventful year of 1775--the year preceding that of the American

Declaration of Independence--opened with increased and formidable

preparations on the part of England to reduce the American colonies to

absolute submission. The ground of this assumption of absolute power

over the colonies had no sanction in the British Constitution, much less

in the history of the colonies; it was a simple declaration or

declaratory Bill by the Parliament itself, in 1764, of its right to bind

the colonies in all cases whatsoever, and no more a part of the British

Constitution than any declaration of Parliament in the previous century

of its authority over the monarchy and the constitution and existence of

the House of Lords. Assuming and declaring an authority over the

American colonies which Parliament had never before, and which it has

never since exercised, and which no statesman or political writer of

repute at this day regards as constitutional, Parliament proceeded to

tax the colonies without their consent, to suspend the legislative

powers of the New York Legislature, to close the port of Boston, to

annul and change all that was free in the Charter Government of

Massachusetts, to forbid the New England colonies the fisheries of

Newfoundland, and afterwards to prohibit to all the colonies commerce

with each other and with foreign countries; to denounce, as in the Royal

Speech to Parliament of the previous October, as "rebellion,"

remonstrances against and opposition to these arbitrary and cruel

enactments; to appeal to Holland and Russia (but in vain) for the aid

of foreign soldiers, and to hire of German blood-trading princes

seventeen thousand mercenary soldiers to butcher British subjects in the

colonies, even to liberate slaves for the murder of their masters, and

to employ savage Indians to slaughter men, women, and children.

All this was done by the King and his servants against the colonies

before the close of the year 1775, while they still disclaimed any

design or desire for independence, and asked for nothing more than they

enjoyed in 1763, after they had given the noblest proof of liberality

and courage, to establish and maintain British supremacy in America

during the seven years' war between England and France, and enjoyed much

less of that local self-government, immunity, and privilege which every

inhabitant of the Canadian Dominion enjoys at this day.

During that French war, and for a hundred years before, the colonists

had provided fortresses, artillery, arms, and ammunition for their own

defence; they were practised marksmen, far superior to the regular

soldiery of the British army, with the character and usages of which

they had become familiar. They offered to provide for their own defence

as well as for the support of their civil government, both of which the

British Government requires of the provinces of the Canadian Dominion,

but both of which were denied to the old provinces of America, after the

close of the seven years' war with France. The King and his Ministers

not only opposed the colonies providing for their own defence, but

ordered the seizure of their magazines, cannon, and arms. General Gage

commenced this kind of provocation and attack upon the colonists and

their property; seized the arms of the inhabitants of Boston; spiked

their cannon at night on Fort Hill; seized by night, also, 13 tons of

colonial powder stored at Charleston; sent by night an expedition of

eight hundred troops, twenty miles to Concord, to seize military

provisions, but they were driven back to Lexington with the loss of 65

killed and 180 wounded, and on the part of the colonists 50 killed and

34 wounded. This was the commencement of a bloody revolution, and was

soon followed by the battle of Bunker's Hill, in which, "on the part of

the British," says Holmes, "about 3,000 men were engaged in this action;

and their killed and wounded amounted to 1,054. The number of Americans

in this engagement was 1,500; and their killed, wounded, and missing

amounted to 453."[374]

In each of these conflicts the attack was made and the first shot was

fired on the part of the British troops. Of this, abundant evidence was

forthwith collected and sent to England. It was carefully inculcated

that in no instance should the colonists attack or fire the first shot

upon the British troops; that in all cases they should act upon the

defensive, as their cause was the defence of their rights and property;

but when attacked, they retaliated with a courage, skill, and deadly

effect that astonished their assailants, and completely refuted the

statements diligently made in England and circulated in the army, that

the colonists had no military qualities and would never face British

troops.[375]

About the same time that General Gage thus commenced war upon the

people of Massachusetts, who so nobly responded in defence of their

constitutional rights, Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, committed

similar outrages upon the traditionally loyal Virginians, who, as Mr.

Bancroft says, "were accustomed to associate all ideas of security in

their political rights with the dynasty of Hanover, and had never, even

in thought, desired to renounce their allegiance. They loved to consider

themselves an integral part of the British empire. The distant life of

landed proprietors, in solitary mansion-houses, favoured independence of

thought; but it also generated an aristocracy, which differed widely

from the simplicity and equality of New England. Educated in the

Anglican Church, no religious zeal had imbued them with a fixed hatred

of kingly power; no deep-seated antipathy to a distinction of ranks, no

theoretic zeal for the introduction of a republic, no speculative

fanaticism drove them to a restless love of change. They had, on the

contrary, the greatest aversion to a revolution, and abhorred the

dangerous experiment of changing their form of government without some

absolute necessity."[376]

But the Virginians, like all true loyalists, were "loyal to the people's

part of the Constitution as well as to that which pertains to the

Sovereign."[377] To intimidate them, Dunmore issued proclamations, and

threatened freeing the slaves against their masters. On the night of the

20th of April he sent a body of marines, in the night, to carry off a

quantity of gunpowder belonging to the colony, and stored in its

magazine at Williamsburg. As soon as this arbitrary seizure of the

colony's property became known, drums sounded alarm throughout the city

of Williamsburg, the volunteer company rallied under arms, and the

inhabitants assembled for consultation, and at their request the Mayor

and Corporation waited upon the Governor and asked him his motives for

carrying off their powder privately "by an armed force, particularly at

a time when they were apprehensive of an insurrection among their

slaves;" and they demanded that the powder should be forthwith restored.

Lord Dunmore first answered evasively; but learning that the citizens

had assembled under arms, he raged and threatened. He said: "The whole

country can easily be made a solitude; and by the living God, if any

insult is offered to me, or to those who have obeyed my orders, I will

declare freedom to the slaves, and lay the town in ashes."[378]

Lord Dunmore at the same time wrote to the English Secretary of State:

"With a small body of troops and arms, I could raise such a force among

_Indians, Negroes_, and other persons, as would soon reduce the

refractory people of this colony to obedience."

Yet, after all his boasting and threats, the value of the powder thus

unlawfully seized was restored to the colony. Lord Dunmore, agitated

with fears, as most tyrants are, left the Government House from fear of

the people excited by his own conduct towards them, and went on board of

the man-of-war ship _Tower_, at York (about 12 miles from Williamsburg,

the capital of the Province), thus leaving the colony in the absolute

possession of its own inhabitants, giving as a reason for his flight,

his apprehension of "falling a sacrifice to the daringness and

atrociousness, the blind and unmeasurable fury of great numbers of the

people;" and the assurance of the very people whom he feared as to his

personal safety and that of his family, and the repeated entreaties of

the Legislative Assembly that he would return to land, with assurance

of perfect safety from injury or insult, could not prevail upon Lord

Dunmore to return to the Government House, or prevent him from

attempting to govern the ancient Dominion of Virginia from ships of war.

He seized a private printing press, with two of its printers, at the

town of Norfolk, and was thus enabled to issue his proclamations and

other papers against the inhabitants whom he had so grossly insulted and

injured.[379]

"In October" (1775), says Bancroft, "Dunmore repeatedly landed

detachments to seize arms wherever he could find them. Thus far Virginia

had not resisted the British by force. The war began in that colony with

the defence of Hampton, a small village at the end of the isthmus

between York and James rivers. An armed sloop had been driven on its

shore in a very violent gale; its people took out of her six swivels and

other stores, made some of her men prisoners, and then set her on fire.

Dunmore blockaded the port; they called to their assistance a company of

"Shirtmen," as the British called the Virginia regulars, from the

hunting shirt which was their uniform, and another company of minute

men, besides a body of militia."

"On the 26th Dunmore sent some of the tenders close into Hampton Roads

to destroy the town. The guard marched out to repel them, and the moment

they came within gunshot, George Nicholas, who commanded the Virginians,

fired his musket at one of the tenders; it was the first gun fired in

Virginia against the British. His example was followed by his party.

Retarded by boats which had been sunk across the Channel, the British on

that day vainly attempted to land. The following night the Culpepper

riflemen were despatched to the aid of Hampton; and William Woodford,

Colonel of the 2nd Regiment of Virginia, was sent by the Committee of

Safety from Williamsburg to take the direction. The next day the

British, having cut their way through the sunken boats, renewed the

attack; but the riflemen poured upon them a heavy fire, killing a few

and wounding more. One of the tenders was taken, with its armament and

seven seamen; the rest were with difficulty towed out of the creek. The

Virginians lost not a man. This was the first battle of the revolution

in the ancient Dominion, and its honours belonged to the

Virginians."[380]

In consequence of this failure of Lord Dunmore to burn the town of

Hampton, he proclaimed martial law and freedom to the slaves. The

English Annual Register states that, "In consequence of the repulse (at

Hampton) a proclamation was issued (Nov. 7th) by the Governor, dated on

board the ship _William_, off Norfolk, declaring, that as the civil law

was at present insufficient to prevent and punish treason and traitors,

martial law should take place, and be executed throughout the colony;

and requiring all persons capable of bearing arms to repair to his

Majesty's standard, or to be considered as traitors." He also declared

all indentured servants, negroes, and others, appertaining to rebels,

who were able and willing to bear arms, and who joined his Majesty's

forces, to be free.

"The measure for emancipating the negroes," continues the Annual

Register, "excited less surprise, and probably had less effect, from its

being so long threatened and apprehended, than if it had been more

immediate and unexpected. It was, however, received with the greatest

horror in all the colonies, and has been severely condemned elsewhere,

as tending to loosen the bands of society, to destroy domestic security,

and encourage the most barbarous of mankind to the commission of the

most horrible crimes and the most inhuman cruelties; that it was

confounding the innocent with the guilty, and exposing those who were

the best of friends to the Government, to the same loss of property,

danger, and destruction with the most incorrigible rebels."[381]

It will be observed in Lord Dunmore's proclamation, as also in the

English Register, and I may add in General Stedman's History of the

American War, and in other histories of those times, the terms "rebels,"

"treason," and "traitors" are applied to those who, at that time, as in

all previous years, disclaimed all desire of separation from England,

and only claimed those constitutional rights of Englishmen to which they

were as lawfully entitled as the King was to his Crown, and very much

more so than Lord Dunmore was entitled to the authority which he was

then exercising; for he had been invested with authority to rule

according to the Constitution of the colony, but he had set aside the

Legislature of the colony, which had as much right to its opinions and

the expression of them as he had to his; he had abandoned the legal seat

of government, and taken up his residence on board a man-of-war, and

employed his time and strength in issuing proclamations against people

to whom he had been sent to govern as the representative of a

_constitutional_ sovereign, and made raids upon their coasts, and burned

their towns. In truth, Lord Dunmore and his abettors were the real

"rebels" and "traitors," who were committing "treason" against the

constitutional rights and liberties of their fellow-subjects, while the

objects of their hostility were the real loyalists to the Constitution,

which gave to the humblest subject his rights as well as to the

Sovereign his prerogatives.

Lord Dunmore, from his ship of war, had no right to rule the rich and

most extensive colony in America. He had abandoned his appointed seat of

government, and he became the ravager of the coasts and the destroyer of

the seaport towns of the ancient dominion. This state of things could

not long continue. Lord Dunmore could not subsist his fleet without

provisions; and the people would not sell their provisions to those who

were seeking to rob them of their liberties and to plunder their

property. The English Annual Register observes:

"In the meantime, the people in the fleet were distressed for provisions

and necessaries of every sort, and were cut off from every kind of

succour from the shore. This occasioned constant bickering between the

armed ships and boats, and the forces that were stationed on the coast,

particularly at Norfolk. At length, upon the arrival of the _Liverpool_

man-of-war from England, a flag was sent on shore to put the question

"whether they would supply his Majesty's ships with provisions?" which

being answered in the negative, and the ships in the harbour being

continually annoyed by the fire of the rebels from that part of the town

which lay next the water, it was determined to dislodge them by

destroying it. Previous notice being accordingly given to the

inhabitants that they might remove from danger, the first day of the New

Year (1776) was signalized by the attack, when a violent cannonade from

the _Liverpool_ frigate, two sloops of war, and the Governor's armed

ship the _Dunmore_, seconded by parties of sailors and marines, who

landed and set fire to the nearest houses, _soon produced the desired

effect, and the whole town was reduced to ashes_."[382]

Mr. Bancroft eloquently observes: "In this manner the Royal Governor

burned and laid waste the best town in the oldest and most loyal colony

of England, to which Elizabeth had given a name, and Raleigh devoted his

fortune, and Shakspeare and Bacon and Herbert foretokened greatness; a

colony where the people themselves had established the Church of

England, and where many were still proud of their ancestors, and in the

day of the British Commonwealth had been faithful to the line of

kings."[383]

When Washington learned the fate of the rich emporium of his own

"country," for so he called Virginia, his breast heaved with waves of

anger and grief. "I hope," said he, "this and the threatened devastation

of other places will unite the whole country in one indissoluble band

against a Government which seems lost to every sense of virtue and those

feelings which distinguish a civilized people from the most barbarous

savages."

Thus the loyal churchmen of Virginia received the same treatment from

Lord Dunmore as did the republican Congregationalists of Massachusetts

from General Gage. The loyal Presbyterians of the two Carolinas

experienced similar treatment from Governors Campbell and Martin, as

stated by the English Annual Register, in the preceding note. The three

Southern Governors each fled from their seats of government and betook

themselves to ships of war; while Gage was shut up in Boston until his

recall to England.

The Southern colonies, with those of New England, shared the same fate

of misrepresentation, abuse, and invasion of their rights as British

subjects; the flames of discontent were spread through all the colonies

by a set of incompetent and reckless Governors, the favourites and tools

of perhaps the worst Administration and the most corrupt that ever ruled

Great Britain. All the colonies might adopt the language of the last

address of the Assembly of Virginia: "We have exhausted every mode of

application which our inventions could suggest, as proper and promising.

We have decently remonstrated with Parliament; they have added new

injuries to the old. We have wearied the King with our supplications; he

has not deigned to answer them. We have appealed to the native honour

and justice of the British nation; their efforts in our favour have been

hitherto ineffectual." At the meeting of Parliament, October 26th,

1775, the King was advised to utter in the Royal speech the usual

denunciation against the colonies, but the minority in Parliament (led

by Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke, General Conway, and Lord John Cavendish)

discussed and denied the statements in the Royal speech, and exhibited

the results of the Ministerial warfare against the colonies at the close

of the year 1775, the year before the Declaration of Independence. "In

this contest," says the Annual Register of 1776, "the speech was taken

to pieces, and every part of it most severely scrutinized. The Ministers

were charged with having brought their Sovereign into the most

disgraceful and unhappy situation of any monarch now living. Their

conduct had already wrested the sceptre of America out of his hands.

One-half of the empire was lost, and the other thrown into a state of

anarchy and confusion. After having spread corruption like a deluge

through the land, until all public virtue was lost, and the people were

inebriated with vice and profligacy, they were then taught in the

paroxysms of their infatuation and madness to cry out for havoc and war.

History could not show an instance of such an empire ruined in such a

manner. They had lost a greater extent of dominion in the first campaign

of a ruinous civil war, which was intentionally produced by their own

acts, than the most celebrated conquerors had ever acquired in so short

a space of time.

"The speech was said to be composed of a mixture of assumed and false

facts, with some general undefined and undisputed axioms, which nobody

would attempt to controvert. Of the former, that of charging the

colonies with aiming at independence was severely reprehended, as being

totally unfounded, being directly contrary to the whole tenor of their

conduct, to their most express declarations both by word and writing,

and to what every person of any intelligence knew of their general

temper and disposition.[384] But what they never intended, we may drive

them to. They will, undoubtedly, prefer independence to slavery. They

will never continue their connection with this country unless they can

be connected with its privileges. The continuance of hostility, with the

determined refusal of security for these privileges, will infallibly

bring on separation.

"The charge of their making professions of duty and proposals of

reconciliation only for the insidious purpose of amusing and deceiving,

was equally reprobated. It was insisted that, on the contrary, these had

from the beginning told them honestly, openly and bravely, without

disguise or reserve, and declared to all the world, that they never

would submit to be arbitrarily taxed by any body of men whatsoever in

which they were not represented. They did not whisper behind the door,

nor mince the matter; they told fairly what they would do, and have

done, if they were unhappily urged to the last extremity. And that

though the Ministers affected not to believe them, it was evident from

the armament which they sent out that they did; for however incompetent

that armament has been to the end, nobody could admit a doubt that it

was intended to oppose men in arms, and to compel by force, the

incompetence for its purposes proceeding merely from that blind

ignorance and total misconception of American affairs which had operated

upon the Ministers in every part of their conduct.

"The shameful accusation," they said, "was only to cover that wretched

conduct, and, if possible, to hide or excuse the disgrace and failure

that had attended all their measures. Was any other part of their policy

more commendable or more successful? Did the cruel and sanguinary laws

of the preceding session answer any of the purposes for which they were

proposed? Had they in any degree fulfilled the triumphant predictions,

had they kept in countenance the overbearing vaunts of the Minister?

They have now sunk into the same nothingness with the terrors of that

armed force which was to have looked all America into submission. The

Americans have faced the one, and they despise the injustice and

iniquity of the other....

"The question of rebellion was also agitated; and it was asserted that

the taking up of arms in the defence of just rights did not, according

to the spirit of the British Constitution, come within that

comprehension. It was also asserted with great confidence, that

notwithstanding the mischiefs which the Americans had suffered, and the

great losses they had sustained, they would still readily lay down their

arms, and return with the greatest good-will and emulation to their

duty, if candid and unequivocal measures were taken for reinstating them

in their former rights; but that this must be done speedily, before the

evils had taken too wide an extent, and the animosity and irritation

arising from them had gone beyond a certain pitch.

"The boasted lenity of Parliament was much lauded. It was asked whether

the Boston Port Bill, by which, without trial or condemnation, a number

of people were stripped of their commercial property, and even deprived

of the benefit of their real estates, was an instance of it? Was it to

be found in the Fishery Bill, by which large countries were cut off from

the use of the elements, and deprived of the provision which nature had

allotted for their sustenance? Or was taking away the Charter and all

the rights of the people without trial or forfeiture the measure of

lenity from which such applause was now sought? Was the indemnity held

out to military power lenity? Was it lenity to free soldiers from a

trial in the country where the murders with which they should stand

charged, when acting in support of civil and revenue officers, were

committed, and forcing their accusers to come to England at the pleasure

of a governor?" ...

"The debate in the House of Lords was rendered particularly remarkable

by the unexpected defection of a noble duke (Duke of Grafton) who had

been for some years at the head of the Administration, had resigned of

his own accord at a critical period, but who had gone with the

Government ever since, and was at this time in high office. The line

which he immediately took was still more alarming to the Administration

than the act of defection. Besides a decisive condemnation of all their

acts for some time past with respect to America, as well as of the

measures now held out by the speech, he declared that he had been

deceived and misled upon that subject; that by the withholding of

information, and the misrepresentation of facts, he had been induced to

lend his countenance to measures which he never approved; among those

was that in particular of coercing America by force of arms, an idea the

most distant from his mind and opinions, but which he was blindly led to

give a support to from his total ignorance of the true state and

disposition of the colonies, and the firm persuasion held out that

matters would never come to an extremity of that nature; that an

appearance of coercion was all that was required to establish a

reconciliation, and that the stronger the Government appeared, and the

better it was supported, the sooner all disputes would be adjusted."

"He declared that nothing less than a total repeal of all the American laws

which had been passed since 1763 could now restore peace and happiness,

or prevent the most destructive and fatal consequences--consequences which

could not even be thought of without feeling the utmost degree of grief

and horror; that nothing could have brought him out in the present ill

state of his health but the fullest conviction of his being right--a

knowledge of the critical situation of his country, and a sense of what

he owed to his duty and to his conscience; that these operated so strongly

upon him, that no state of indisposition, if he were even obliged to come

in a litter, should prevent his attending to express his utmost

disapprobation of the measures which were now being pursued, as well as

of those which he understood from the lords in office it was intended

still to pursue. He concluded by declaring that if his nearest relations

or dearest friends were to be affected by this question or that the loss

of fortune, or of every other thing which he most esteemed, was to be

the certain consequence of his present conduct, yet the strong conviction

and compulsion operating at once upon his mind and conscience would not

permit him to hesitate upon the part which he should take.

"The address was productive of a _protest_ signed by _nineteen_ lords,

in which they combat the civil war as unjust and impolitic in its

principles, dangerous in its contingent and fatal in its final

consequences. They censured the calling in of foreign forces to decide

domestic quarrels as disgraceful and dangerous. They sum up and conclude

the protest by declaring: 'We cannot, therefore, consent to an address

which may deceive his Majesty and the public into a belief of the

confidence of this House in the present Ministers, who have deceived

Parliament, disgraced the nation, lost the colonies, and involved us in

a civil war against our clearest interests, and upon the most

unjustifiable grounds wantonly spilling the blood of thousands of our

fellow-subjects.'"[385]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 374: Annals, etc., Vol. II., p. 211. The annalist adds in a

note, that "Of the British 226 were killed and 828 wounded; 19

commissioned officers being among the former, and 70 among the latter.

Of the Americans, 139 were killed and 314 wounded and missing. The only

provincial officers of distinction lost were General Joseph Warren, Col.

Gardner, Lieut.-Col. Parker, and Messrs. Moore and McClany."]

[Footnote 375: The royal historian, Andrews, gives the following or

English account of the battle of Bunker's Hill, together with the

circumstances which preceded and followed it:

(PRELIMINARY STATEMENTS.)

"On the 12th of June (1775), a proclamation was issued by the British

Government at Boston, offering a pardon, in the King's name, to all who

laid down their arms and returned to their homes and occupations. Two

persons only were excepted--Mr. Samuel Adams and Mr. John Hancock--whose

guilt was represented as too great and notorious to escape punishment.

All who did not accept of this offer, or who assisted, abetted, or

corresponded with them, were to be deemed guilty of treason and

rebellion, and treated accordingly. By this proclamation it was declared

that as the Courts of Judicature were shut, martial law should take

place, till a due course of justice could be re-established.

"But this act of Government was as little regarded as the preceding. To

convince the world how firmly they were determined to persevere in their

measures, and how small an impression was made by the menaces of

Britain, Mr. Hancock, immediately after his proscription, was chosen

President of the Congress. The proclamation had no other effect than to

prepare people's minds for the worst that might follow.

"The reinforcements arrived from Britain; the eagerness of the British

military to avail themselves of their present strength, and the position

of the Provincials, concurred to make both parties diligent in their

preparation for action. It was equally the desire of both: the first

were earnest to exhibit an unquestionable testimony of their

superiority, and to terminate the quarrel by one decisive blow; the

others were no less willing to come to a second engagement (the first

being that of Concord and Lexington), from a confidence they would be

able to convince their enemies that they would find the subjugation of

America a much more difficult task than they hod promised themselves.

"Opposite to the northern shore of the peninsula upon which Boston

stands, lies Charleston, divided from it by a river (Mystic) about the

breadth of the Thames at London Bridge. Neither the British nor

Provincial troops had hitherto bethought themselves of securing this

place. In its neighbourhood, a little to the east, is a high ground

called Bunker's Hill, which overlooks and commands the whole town of

Boston.

"In the night of the 16th of June, a party of the Provincials took

possession of this hill, and worked with so much industry and diligence,

that by break of day they had almost completed a redoubt, together with

a strong intrenchment, reaching half a mile, as far as the River Mystic

to the east. As soon as discovered they were plied with a heavy and

incessant fire from the ships and floating batteries that surrounded the

neck on which Charleston is situated, and from the cannon planted on the

nearest eminence on the Boston side.

"This did not, however, prevent them from continuing their work, which

they had entirely finished by mid-day, when it was found necessary to

take more effectual methods to dislodge them.

"For this purpose a considerable body was landed at the foot of Bunker's

Hill, under the command of General Howe and General Pigot. The first was

to attack the Provincial lines, the second the redoubt. The British

troops advanced with great intrepidity, but on their approach were

received with a fire behind from the intrenchments, that continued

pouring during a full half hour upon them like a stream. The execution

it did was terrible; some of the bravest and oldest officers declared

that, for the time it lasted, it was the hottest service they had ever

seen. General Howe stood for some moments almost alone, the officers and

soldiers about him being nearly all slain or disabled; his intrepidity

and presence of mind were remarkable on this trying occasion.

"General Pigot, on the left, was in the meantime engaged with the

Provincials who had thrown themselves into Charleston, as well as with

the redoubt, and met with the same reception as the right. Though he

conducted his attack with great skill and courage, the incessant

destruction made among the troops threw them at first into some

disorder; but General Clinton coming up with a reinforcement, they

quickly rallied and attacked the works with such fury that the

Provincials were not able to resist them, and retreated beyond the neck

of land that leads into Charleston.

"This was the bloodiest engagement during the whole war. The loss of the

British troops amounted in killed and wounded to upwards of 1,000. Among

the first were 19, and among the last 70 officers. Colonel Abercrombie,

Major Pitcairn, of the Marines, and Majors Williams and Spenlowe, men of

distinguished bravery, fell in this action, which, though it terminated

to the advantage of the King's forces, cost altogether a dreadful price.

"The loss on the Provincial side, according to their account, did not

exceed 500. This might be true, as they fought behind intrenchments,

part of which were cannon proof, and where it was not possible for the

musketry to annoy them. This accounts no less for the numbers they

destroyed, to which the expertness of their marksmen chiefly

contributed. To render the dexterity of these completely effectual,

muskets ready loaded were handed to them as fast as they could be

discharged, that they might lose no time in reloading them, and they

took aim chiefly at the officers....

"The great slaughter occasioned on the left of the British troops, from

the houses in Charleston, obliged them to set fire to that place. The

Provincials defended it for some time with much obstinacy, but it was

quickly reduced to ashes; and when deprived of that cover, they were

immediately compelled to retire.

"But notwithstanding the honour of the day remained to the British

troops, the Americans boasted that the real advantages were on their

side. They had, said they, so much weakened their enemies in this

engagement, as to put an entire stop to their operations. Instead of

coming forth and improving their pretended victory, they did not dare to

venture out of the trenches and fortifications they had constructed

round Boston.

"The only apparent benefit gained by the troops was that they kept

possession of the ground whereon Charleston had stood; they fortified it

on every side, in order to secure themselves from the sudden attacks

that were daily threatened from so numerous a force as that which now

invested Boston....

"The Provincials, on the other hand, to convince the troops how little

their success had availed them, raised intrenchments on a height

opposite Charleston, intimating to them that they were ready for another

Bunker's Hill business whenever they thought proper, and were no less

willing than they to make another trial of skill.

"Their boldness increased to a degree that astonished the British

officers, who had, unhappily, been taught to believe them a contemptible

enemy, averse to the dangers of war, and incapable of the regular

operations of an army. The skirmishes were now renewed in Boston Bay.

The necessities of the garrison occasioned several attempts to carry off

the remaining stock of cattle and other articles of provision the

islands might contain. But the Provincials, who were better acquainted

with the navigation of the bay, landed on these islands, in spite of the

precaution of the numerous shipping, and destroyed or carried off

whatever could be of use; they even ventured so far as to burn the

light-house, situated at the entrance of the harbour, and afterwards

made prisoners of a number of workmen that had been sent to repair it,

together with a party of marines that guarded them." (Dr. Andrews'

History of the Late War, etc., Vol. I., Chap. xiii., pp. 300-306;

published under royal authority in 1785.)]

[Footnote 376: History of the United States, Vol. VII., Chap. xxv., pp.

271, 272.]

[Footnote 377: The Secretary of State had instructed Lord Dunmore to

call the Assembly together, in order to submit to them a "conciliatory

proposition," as it was called, which Lord North had introduced into

Parliament--a proposition calculated to divide the colonies, and then

reduce each of them to servitude; but the colonies saw the snare, and

every one of them rejected the insidious offer. Lord Dunmore, in

obedience to his instructions, assembled for the last time the Virginia

House of Burgesses in June, 1775, to deliberate and decide upon Lord

North's proposition. But while the Burgesses were deliberating upon the

subject submitted to them, Lord Dunmore, agitated by his own fears, left

with his family the seat of government, and went on board a ship of war.

The House of Burgesses, however, proceeded in their deliberations;

referred the subject to a Committee, which presented a report prepared

by Mr. Jefferson, and adopted by the House, as a final answer to Lord

North's proposal. They said, "Next to the possession of liberty, they

should consider a reconciliation as the greatest of human blessings, but

that the resolution of the House of Commons only changed the form of

oppression, without lightening its burdens; that government in the

colonies was instituted not for the British Parliament, but for the

colonies themselves; that the British Parliament had no right to meddle

with their Constitution, or to prescribe either the number or the

pecuniary appointments of their officers; that they had a right to give

their money without coercion, and from time to time; that they alone

were the judges, alike of the public exigencies and the ability of the

people; that they contended not merely for the mode of raising their

money, but for the freedom of granting it; that the resolve to forbear

levying pecuniary taxes still left unrepealed the Acts restraining

trade, altering the form of government of Massachusetts, changing the

government of Quebec, enlarging the jurisdiction of Courts of Admiralty,

taking away the trial by jury, and keeping up standing armies; that the

invasion of the colonies with large armaments by sea and land was a

style of asking gifts not reconcilable to freedom; that the resolution

did not propose to the colonies to lay open a free trade with all the

world; that as it involved the interests of all the other colonies, they

were in honour bound to share one fate with them; that the Bill of Lord

Chatham on the one part, and the terms of Congress on the other, would

have formed a basis for negotiation and a reconciliation; that leaving

the final determination of the question to the General Congress, they

will weary the King with no more petitions--the British nation with no

more appeals." "What then," they ask, "remains to be done?" and they

answer, "That we commit our injuries to the justice of the even-handed

Being who doeth no wrong."

When the Earl of Shelburne read Mr. Jefferson's report, he said: "In my

life I was never more pleased with a State paper than with the Assembly

of Virginia's discussion of Lord North's proposition. It is masterly.

But what I fear is, that the evil is irretrievable."

"At Versailles, the French Minister, Vergennes, was equally attracted by

the wisdom and dignity of the document. He particularly noticed the

insinuation that a compromise might be effected on the basis of the

modification of the Navigation Acts; and saw so many ways opened of

settling every difficulty, that it was long before he could persuade

himself that the infatuation of the British Ministry was so blind as to

neglect them all." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VII.,

Chap, xxxvii., pp. 386-388.)]

[Footnote 378: Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VII., Chap.

xxv., p. 276.

"The offer of freedom to the negroes came very oddly from the

representative of the nation which had sold them to their present

masters, and of the King who had been displeased with the colony for its

desire to tolerate that inhuman traffic no longer; and it was but a sad

resource for a commercial metropolis, to keep a hold on its colony by

letting loose slaves against its own colonists."--_Ib._, p. 276.

"Dunmore's menace to raise the standard of a servile insurrection and

set the slaves upon their masters, with British arms in their hands,

filled the South with horror and alarm. Besides, the retreat of the

British troops from Concord raised the belief that the American forces

were invincible; and the spirit of resistance had grown so strong, that

some of the Burgesses appeared in the uniform of the recently instituted

provincial troops, wearing a hunting shirt of coarse linen over their

clothes, and a woodman's axe by their sides."--_Ib._, pp. 384, 385.]

[Footnote 379: "Meantime, Dunmore, driven from the land of Virginia,

maintained command of the water by means of a flotilla composed of the

_Mercury_, of 24 guns; the _Kingfisher_, of 16; the _Otter_, of 14, with

other ships and light vessels, and tenders which he had engaged in the

King's service. At Norfolk, a town of about 6,000 inhabitants, a

newspaper was published by John Holt. About noon on the last day of

September (1775), Dunmore, finding fault with its favouring (according

to him) 'sedition and rebellion,' sent on shore a small party, who,

meeting with no resistance, seized and brought off two printers and all

the materials of the printing office, so that he could publish from his

ship a Gazette on the side of the King. The outrage, as we shall see,

produced retaliation." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol.

VIII., Chap. lv., pp. 220, 221.)]

[Footnote 380: Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VIII.,

Chap. lv., pp. 221, 222.

The English Annual Register of 1776 states as follows the policy of Lord

Dunmore, culminating in the successful defence of Hampton and the

repulse of his ships:

"Whether Lord Dunmore expected that any extraordinary advantages might

be derived from an insurrection of the slaves, or that he imagined there

was a much greater number of people in the colony who were satisfied

with the present system of government than really was the case (_a

mistake, and an unfortunate one, which, like an epidemical distemper,

seems to have spread through all our official departments in

America_)--upon whatever grounds he proceeded, he determined, though he

relinquished his government, not to abandon his hopes, nor entirely to

lose sight of the country which he had governed. He, accordingly, being

joined by those friends of government who had rendered themselves too

obnoxious to the people to continue with safety in the country, as well

as by a number of runaway negroes, and supported by the frigates of war

which were upon the station, endeavoured to establish such a marine

force as would enable him, by means of the noble rivers, which render

the most valuable parts of that rich country accessible by water, to be

always at hand and ready to profit by any favourable occasion that

offered.

"Upon this or some similar system he by degrees equipped and armed a

number of vessels of different kinds and sizes, _in one of which he

constantly resided, never setting his foot on shore but in a hostile

manner_. The force thus put together was, however, _calculated only for

depredation_, and never became equal to any essential service. The

former, indeed, was in part a matter of necessity; for as the people on

shore would not supply those on board with provisions or necessaries,

they must either starve or provide them by force.... These proceedings

occasioned the sending of some detachments of the new-raised forces of

the colonists to protect their coasts, and from these ensued a small,

mischievous, predatory war, incapable of affording honour or benefit,

and in which, at length, every drop of water and every necessary was

purchased at the price or risk of blood.

"During this state of hostility, Lord Dunmore procured a few soldiers

from different parts, with whose assistance an attempt (Oct. 25th) was

made to burn a post town in an important situation called Hampton. It

seems the inhabitants had some previous suspicion of the design, for

they had sunk boats in the entrance of the harbour and thrown such other

obstacles in the way as rendered the approach of the ships, and

consequently a landing, impracticable on the day when the attack was

commenced. The ships cut a passage through the boats in the night, and

began to cannonade the town furiously in the morning; but at this

critical period the townspeople were relieved from their apprehensions

and danger by the arrival of a detachment of rifle and minute men from

Williamsburg, who had marched all night to their assistance. These,

joined with the inhabitants, attacked the ships so vigorously with their

small arms that they were obliged precipitately to quit their station,

with the loss of some men and of a tender, which was taken." (Annual

Register, Vol. XIX., Fourth Edition, pp. 26, 27.)]

[Footnote 381: English Annual Register, Vol. XIX.]

[Footnote 382: British Annual Register, Vol. XIX., p. 31.

Mr. Bancroft's account of this barbarous conflagration is as follows:

"New Year's day, 1776, was the saddest day that ever broke on the women

and children then in Norfolk; warned of their danger by the commander of

the squadron, there was for them no refuge. The _Kingfisher_ was

stationed at the upper end of Norfolk; a little below her, the _Otter_;

Belew, in the _Liverpool_, anchored near the middle of the town; and

next him lay the _Dunmore_; the rest of the fleet was moored in the

harbour. Between three and four in the afternoon, the _Liverpool_ opened

its fire upon the borough; the other ships immediately followed the

example, and a severe cannonade was begun from about sixty pieces of

cannon. Dunmore then himself, as night was coming on, ordered out

several boats to burn warehouses on the wharves; and hailed to Belew to

set fire to a large brig which lay in the dock. All the vessels of the

fleet, to show their zeal, sent great numbers of boats on shore to

assist in spreading the flames along the river; and as the buildings

were chiefly of pine wood, the conflagration, favoured by the wind,

spread with amazing rapidity, and soon became general. Women and

children, mothers with little ones in their arms, were seen by the glare

running through the shower of cannon balls to get out of their range.

Two or three persons were hit; and the scene became one of extreme

horror and confusion. Several times the British attempted to land, and

once to bring cannon into the street; but they were driven back by the

spirit and conduct of the Americans. The cannonade did not abate till

ten at night; after a short pause it was renewed, but with less fury,

and was kept up till two the next morning. The flames, which had made

their way from street to street, raged for three days; till four-fifths,

or, as some computed, nine-tenths of the houses were reduced to ashes

and heaps of ruins." (History of the United States, Vol. VIII., Chap.

lvi., pp. 230, 231.)]

[Footnote 383: History of the United States, Vol. VIII., Chap. lvi., p.

231.

The English Annual Register observes: "Such was the fate of the

unfortunate town of Norfolk, the most considerable for commerce in the

colony, and so growing and flourishing before these unhappy troubles,

that in the two years from 1773 to 1775, the rents of the houses

increased from £8,000 to £10,000 a year. However just the cause, or

urgent the necessity, which induced this measure, it was undoubtedly a

grievous and odious task to a Governor to be himself the principal actor

in burning and destroying the best town in his government.

"Nor was the situation of other Governors in America much more eligible

than that of Lord Dunmore. In South Carolina, Lord William Campbell,

having as they said, entered into a negotiation with the Indians for

coming in to the support of the Government in that province, and having

also succeeded in exciting a number of those back settlers whom we have

heretofore seen distinguished in the Carolinas, under the title of

Regulators, to espouse the same cause, the discovery of these measures,

before they were ripe for execution, occasioned such a ferment among the

people, that he thought it necessary to retire from Charleston on board

a ship of war in the river, from whence he returned no more to the seat

of his government.

"Similar measures were pursued in North Carolina (with the difference

that Governor Martin was more active and vigorous in his proceedings),

but attended with as little success. The Provincial Congress,

Committees, and Governor were in a continual state of the most violent

warfare. Upon a number of charges, particularly of fomenting a civil

war, and exciting an insurrection among the negroes, he was declared an

enemy to America in general, and to that colony in particular, and all

persons were forbidden from holding any communication with him. These

declarations he answered with a proclamation of uncommon length, which

the Provincial Congress resolved to be a false, scandalous, scurrilous

and seditious libel, and ordered it to be burned by the hands of the

common hangman.

"As the Governor expected, by means of the back settlers, as well as of

the Scotch inhabitants and Highland emigrants, who were numerous in the

province, to be able to raise a considerable force, he took pains to

fortify and arm his palace at Newburn, that it might answer the double

purpose of a garrison and a magazine. Before this could be effected, the

moving of some cannon excited such a commotion among the people that he

found it necessary to abandon the palace and retire on board a

sloop-of-war in Cape Fear river. The people upon this occasion

discovered powder, shot, ball, and various military stores and

implements which had been buried in the palace garden and yard. This

served to inflame them exceedingly, every man considering it as if it

had been a plot against himself in particular.

"The Provincial Congress published an address to the inhabitants of the

British empire, of the same nature with those we have formerly seen to

the people of Great Britain and Ireland, containing the same professions

of loyalty and affection, and declaring the same earnest desire of a

reconciliation." (English Annual Register, Vol. XIX., pp. 31-33.)]

[Footnote 384: General Conway said: "The noble lord who has the

direction of the affairs of this country tells you that the Americans

aim at Independence. I defy the noble lord, or any other member of this

House, to adduce one solid proof of this charge. He says: 'The era of

1763 is the time they wish to recur to, because such a concession on our

part would be, in effect, giving up their dependence on this country.' I

would ask the noble lord, Did the people of America set up this claim

previous to the year 1763? No; they were then peaceful and dutiful

subjects. They are still dutiful and obedient. (Here was a murmur of

disapprobation.) I repeat my words; I think them so inclined; I am sure

they would be so, if they were permitted: The acts they have committed

arise from no want of either. They have been forced into them. Taxes

have been attempted to be levied on them; their Charters have been

violated, nay, taken away; administration has attempted to coerce them

by the most cruel and oppressive laws."]

[Footnote 385: Annual Register, Vol. XIX., Chap. ix., pp. 57, 58, 63,

69, 70, 74, 75.]

CHAPTER XXV.

THE ASSEMBLING OF CONGRESS, MAY 10TH, 1776, AND TRANSACTIONS UNTIL THE

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, THE 4TH OF JULY.

It was under the circumstances stated in the preceding chapter, the

General Congress, according to adjournment the previous October,

reassembled in Philadelphia the 10th of May, 1776. The colonies were

profoundly convulsed by the transactions which had taken place in

Massachusetts, Virginia, North and South Carolina, by the intelligence

from England, that Parliament had, the previous December, passed an Act

to increase the army, that the British Government had largely increased

both the army and navy, and on failure of obtaining sufficient recruits

in England, Scotland, and Ireland, had negotiated with German princes,

who traded in the blood of their down-trodden subjects, for seventeen

thousand Hanoverian and Hessian mercenaries, to aid in reducing the

American colonies to absolute submission to the will of the King and

Parliament of Great Britain. It was supposed in England that the

decisive Act of Parliament, the unbending and hostile attitude of the

British Ministry, the formidable amount of naval and land forces, would

awe the colonies into unresisting and immediate submission; but the

effect of all these formidable preparations on the part of the British

Government was to unite rather than divide the colonies, and render them

more determined and resolute than ever to defend and maintain their

sacred and inherited rights and liberties as British subjects.

The thirteen colonies were a unit as to what they understood and

contended for in regard to their British constitutional rights and

liberties--namely, the rights which they had enjoyed for more than a

century--the right of taxation by their own elected representatives

alone, the right of providing for the support of their own civil

government and its officers--rights far less extensive than those which

are and have long been enjoyed by the loyal provinces of the Canadian

Dominion. There were, indeed, the Governors and their officers, sent

from England--the favourites and needy dependents of the British

Ministry and Parliament, sent out to subsist upon the colonists, but

were not of them, had no sympathy with them, nor any influence over them

except what they had over their dependents and the families with whom

they had formed connections. They were noisy and troublesome as a

_faction_, but not sufficient in numbers or influence to constitute a

_party_, properly speaking.

There was like unity among the colonies in regard to the _defence_ and

_support_ of the rights and liberties which they claimed. There was,

indeed, doubt on the part of a few, and but a few, comparatively, as to

the wisdom and expediency of taking arms and meeting the King's officers

and troops in the field of battle in support of their rights; but all

agreed that they should defend themselves and their property when

attacked by the King's troops, whether attacked by the King's orders or

not; for they held that their title to their property and constitutional

rights was as sacred and divine as that of the King to his throne.[386]

The question of questions with the General Congress on its assembling

in May, 1776, was what measures should be adopted for the defence of

their violated and invaded rights, and upon what grounds should that

defence be conducted? For the first time in the General Congress was it

proposed to abandon the ground on which they had vindicated and

maintained their rights as British subjects in their several

Legislatures and Conventions for eleven years, and successfully defended

them by force of arms for more than one year, or to avow entire

separation from the mother country, and declare absolute independence as

the ground of maintaining their rights and liberties?

There had long been some prominent men who held republican sentiments,

and some newspapers had in 1775 mooted the idea of separation from the

mother country. Such views prevailed widely in Massachusetts; there had

always been a clique of Congregational Republicans and Separationists in

Boston, from the days of Cromwell. They looked back upon the halcyon

days when none but Congregationalists could hold office--civil,

judicial, or military--or even exercise the elective franchise, and the

disclaimers of any earthly king; and though the separation from the

mother country and renunciation of monarchical government was carefully

avoided in the official documents of Massachusetts, as it was disclaimed

in the strongest terms in the official papers of other colonies, yet the

sentiment of hostility to monarchy and of separation from England was

artfully inculcated in resolutions, addresses, etc., prepared by Samuel

Adams, and sent forth from the Massachusetts Convention.[388] He was a

man of blameless life (no relation to John Adams)--a rigid religionist

of the old Massachusetts Puritan stamp--a hater of England and of

British institutions, able and indefatigable in everything that might

tend to sever America from England, in regard to which his writings

exerted a powerful influence. He was the Corypheus of the Separatist

party in Boston, the Chairman of the Committee of Correspondence, and

wrote the Massachusetts circulars to other colonies.

It was only early in May, 1776, that the question of independence was

discussed in the General Congress. The Congress _recommended_ those

colonies whose Governors had left their governments, or were declared

disqualified on account of their oppressive and cruel conduct, to form

governments for themselves. This, however, was not understood as a

declaration of independence, but a temporary measure of necessity, to

prevent anarchy and confusion in the colonies concerned. This proceeding

was immediately followed by a more comprehensive measure intended to

feel the pulse of the colonies on the subject of independence.

The Congress had waited with considerable patience, and some anxiety,

the result of the late session of Parliament; they had forborne to do

anything which might not be justified upon the fair principles of

self-defence, until it appeared that the Ministry was resolved that

nothing short of the most abject submission should be the price of

accommodation. Early in May, therefore, the Congress adopted a measure

intended to sound the sentiments of the colonies on the subject of

independence. They stated the rejection of their petitions, and the

employment of foreign mercenaries to reduce them to obedience, and

concluded by declaring it expedient that all the colonies should proceed

to the establishment of such a form of government as their

representatives might think most conducive to the peace and happiness of

the people. This preamble and resolution were immediately forwarded; and

in a few days afterwards Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, gave notice to

the Congress that he should, on an appointed day, move for a

_Declaration of Independence_. This was accordingly done, but the

consideration of the question was postponed until the 1st of July--_so

timid, so wavering, so unwilling to break the maternal connection were

most of the members_.[389]

It is clear that, so far from the Declaration of Independence being the

spontaneous uprising of the colonies, as represented by so many American

historians, that when it was first mooted in Congress the majority of

the General Congress itself were startled at it, and were opposed to it.

"On the 15th day of May, only four of the colonies had acted definitely

on the question of independence. North Carolina had authorized her

delegates to concur with the delegates from the other colonies 'in

declaring independency;' Rhode Island had commissioned hers 'to join in

any measures to secure American rights;' in Massachusetts, various towns

had pledged themselves to maintain any declaration on which Congress

might agree; and Virginia had given positive instructions to her

delegates that Congress should make a declaration of independence. These

proceedings were accompanied with declarations respecting a reservation

to each colony of the right to form its own government, in the

adjustment of the power universally felt to be necessary, and which was

to be lodged in a new political unit, designated by the terms,

'Confederation,' 'Continental Constitution,' and 'American

Republic.'"[390]

"On the 7th of June, Richard Henry Lee, in behalf of the Virginia

delegates, submitted in Congress resolves on independence, a

confederation, and foreign alliances. His biographer says that

'tradition relates that he prefaced his motion with a speech,'

portraying the resources of the colonies and their capacity for defence,

dwelling especially on the bearing which an independent position might

have on foreign Powers, and concluded by urging the members so to act,

that the day might give birth to an American Republic. The motion was:--

"'That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and

independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the

British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the

State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.'

"'That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for

forming foreign alliances.'

"'That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the

respective colonies for their consideration and approbation.'

"John Adams seconded the motion. The Journal of Congress says, 'that

certain resolutions respecting independency being moved and seconded,

they were postponed till to-morrow morning,' and that 'the members were

enjoined to attend punctually at ten o'clock in order to take the same

into their consideration. Jefferson says the reason of postponement was

that the House were obliged to attend to other business. The record

indicates that no speech was made on that day.

"The next day was Saturday. John Hancock, the President, was in the

chair; and Charles Thompson was the Secretary. The resolves were

immediately referred to a Committee of the Whole, in which Benjamin

Harrison presided--the confidential correspondent of Washington, and

subsequently Governor of Virginia. They were debated with animation

until seven o'clock in the evening, when the President resumed the

chair, and reported that the Committee had considered the matter

referred to them, but, not having come to any decision, directed him to

move for leave to sit again on Monday.

"In Congress, on Monday, Edward Rutledge moved that the question be

postponed three weeks. The debate on this day continued until seven

o'clock in the evening. Not a single speech of any member is known to be

extant. Jefferson at the time summed up the arguments used by the

speakers during both days. The result may be given in his words: 'It

appearing, in the course of the debates, that the colonies of New York,

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina were

not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but that they were

fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait awhile

for them. It was agreed in Committee of the Whole to report to Congress

a resolution, which was adopted by a vote of seven colonies to five, and

this postponed the resolution on independence to the 1st day of July;

and 'in meanwhile, that no time be lost, a Committee be appointed to

prepare a declaration in conformity to it.' On the next day a Committee

was chosen for this purpose by ballot: Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia;

John Adams, of Massachusetts; Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania; Roger

Sherman, of Connecticut; and Robert R. Livingstone, of New York. [Such

was the Committee that prepared the Declaration of Independence.] On the

12th a Committee of one from each colony was appointed to report the

form of confederation, and a Committee of five to prepare a plan of

treaties to be proposed to foreign Powers.

"When Congress postponed the vote on independence, the popular movement

in its favour was in full activity. Some of the members left this body

to engage in it. Others promoted it by their counsel."[391]

"On the day agreed upon for the consideration of Mr. Lee's motion, the

1st of July, Congress resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole; the

debates on the question were continued with great warmth for _three

days_. It had been determined to take the vote by _colonies_; and as a

master-stroke of policy, the author of which is not known to history, it

had been proposed and agreed, that _the decision on the question,

whatever might be the state of the votes, should appear to the world as

the unanimous voice of the Congress_. On the first question [of

independence], _six_ colonies were in the affirmative, and _six_ in the

negative--_Pennsylvania_ being without a vote by the equal division of

her delegates. In this state of the business, it appears, on the

authority of evidence afterwards adduced before Parliament, that Mr.

_Samuel Adams_ once more successfully exerted his influence; and that

one of the delegates of Pennsylvania was brought over to the side of

independence. It is more probable, however, that the influence of Mr.

Adams extended no further than to procure that one of the dissenting

members withdraw from the House; and that the vote of Pennsylvania was

thus obtained."[392]

It is thus seen that the Declaration of Independence, so far from being

the spontaneous uprising of the American colonies, was the result of

months of agitation by scarcely a dozen leaders in the movement, by

canvassing at public meetings, and of delegates elected by them, not

excelled by any political and nearly balanced parties in England or

Canada in a life and death struggle for victory. In this case, the

important question was to be decided by some fifty members of Congress;

and when the first vote was given, after many weeks of popular

agitation, and three days of warm discussion in Congress, there was a

tie--six colonies for and six against the Declaration of

Independence--after which a majority of one was obtained for the

Declaration, by inducing the absence of certain members opposed to it;

and then, when a majority of votes was thus obtained, others were

persuaded to vote for the measure "_for the sake of unanimity_," though

they were opposed to the measure itself.

It has indeed been represented by some American historians, that the

vote of Congress for Independence was _unanimous_; but the fact is far

otherwise. As the vote was taken by _colonies_, and not by the majority

of the individual members present, as in ordinary legislative

proceedings, the majority of the delegates from each colony determined

the vote of that colony; and by a previous and very adroit proposal, an

agreement was entered into that the _vote of Congress should be

published to the world as_ UNANIMOUS, however divided the votes of

members on the question of Independence might be; and on this ground the

signatures of those who had opposed it, as well as of those who voted in

favour of it, were ultimately affixed to the Declaration, though it was

published and authenticated by the signatures of the President, John

Hancock, of Massachusetts, and Charles Thompson, of Philadelphia, as

Secretary.

The Declaration of Independence, as thus adopted, is as follows:

"A Declaration by the Representatives of the United _States_ of

America, in Congress assembled:

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one

people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them

with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the

separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's

God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind

requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to

such separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created

equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain

unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the

pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are

instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent

of the governed; and whenever any form of government becomes

destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter

or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its

foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such

form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and

happiness. Prudence, indeed, would dictate that governments long

established should not be changed for light and transient causes;

and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more

inclined to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right

themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed;

but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing

invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under

absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw

off such government, and to provide new guards for their future

security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies,

and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their

former systems of government. The history of the present King of

Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations;

all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute

tyranny over these States: to prove this, let facts be exhibited to

a candid world.

"He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary

for the public good.

"He has forbidden his Governours to pass laws of immediate and

pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations till his

assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly

neglected to attend to them.

"He has refused to pass other laws, for the accommodation of large

districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the

rights of representation in the Legislature; a right inestimable to

them, and formidable to tyrants only.

"He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,

uncomfortable, and distant from the depositories of their public

records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance

with his measures.

"He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing,

with manly firmness, his invasion on the rights of the people.

"He has refused, for a long time after such dissolution, to cause

others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of

annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their

exercise--the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the

dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for

that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners,

refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and

raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

"He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his

assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

"He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of

their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms

of officers, to harass our people and eat out their substance.

"He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without

the consent of our Legislatures.

"He has affected to render the military independent of, and

superior to, the civil power.

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction

foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving

his assent to their pretended acts of legislation.

"For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

"For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any

murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these

States.

"For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.

"For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

"For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury.

"For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended

offences.

"For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring

Province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and

enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and

fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these

colonies.

"For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable laws,

and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments.

"For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves

invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

"He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his

protection, and waging war against us.

"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns,

and destroyed the lives of our people.

"He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign

mercenaries to complete the work of death, desolation, and tyranny,

already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely

paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the

head of a civilized nation.

"He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high

seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the

executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves

by their hands.

"He has excited domestick insurrections amongst us, and has

endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the

merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is

undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

"In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress

in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered

only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by

every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a

free people.

"Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We

have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their

Legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us; we

have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and

settlement here; we have appealed to their native justice and

magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common

kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably

interrupt our connection and correspondence. They too have been

deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore,

acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold

them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace

friends.

"We therefore, the representatives of the United States of America,

in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of

the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and

by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly

publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right

ought to be, Free and Independent States; and that they are

absolved from allegiance to the British Crown; and that all

political connection between them and the State of Great Britain

is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and

independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude

peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other

acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for

the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the

protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other

our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour."

* * * * *

_Note_.--This Declaration will be discussed in the next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 386: "The theory that the popular leaders were playing a game

of hypocrisy may be tested in the case of Washington, whose sterling

patriotism was not more conspicuous than his irreproachable integrity.

The New York Provincial Congress, in an address to him (June 26th,

1775), on his way from Philadelphia to the American camp around Boston,

say that accommodation with the mother country was 'the fondest wish of

each American soul.' Washington, in reply, pledged his colleagues and

himself to use every exertion to re-establish peace and harmony. 'When

we assumed the soldier,' he said, 'we did not lay aside the citizen; and

we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in that happy hour when the

establishment of American liberty on the most solid and firm foundations

shall enable us to return to our private stations, in the bosom of a

free, peaceful, and happy country.'[387] There was no incompatibility in

the position of military leader of a great uprising with a desire to

preserve the old political ties. When the Barons of Runnymede,

surrounded by their retainers, wrested from King John the great Charter,

they meant not to renounce their allegiance, but simply to preserve the

old government. Though an act of apparent rebellion, yet it was in the

strictest sense an act of loyalty. So the popular leaders, in their

attitude of armed resistance, were loyal to what they conceived to be

essential to American liberty. They were asserting the majesty of

constitutional law against those who would have destroyed it, and thus

were more loyal to the Constitution than was George III. There really is

no ground on which justly to question the sincerity of declarations like

those of Congress and Washington. They aimed at a redress of grievances;

and the idea was quite general, of a Bill of Rights, or an American

Constitution, embodying the conditions on which the integrity of the

empire might be preserved. This was their last appeal for a settlement

on such a basis." (Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United

States, Chap. xi., pp. 438, 439.)]

[Footnote 387: "The London Chronicle of August 8th, 1775, has the speech

of the New York Provincial Congress, and the reply of Washington of the

26th of June, 1775."]

[Footnote 388: Mr. Bancroft, writing under date of October, 1775, says:

"The Americans had not designed to establish an independent government;

of their leading statesmen it was the desire of Samuel Adams alone; they

had all been educated in the love and admiration of constitutional

monarchy; and even John Adams and Jefferson so sincerely shrank back

from the attempt at creating another government in its stead, that, to

the last moment, they were most anxious to avert a separation, if it

could be avoided without a loss of their inherited liberties." (History

of the United States, Vol. VIII., Chap. li., p. 161.)]

[Footnote 389: Allan's American Revolution, Vol. I., pp. 342, 343.

"The interval was employed in unceasing exertions by the friends of

independence to prepare the minds of the people for the necessity and

advantages of such a measure. The press teemed with essays and

pamphlets, in which all the arts of eloquence were used to ridicule the

prejudices which supported an attachment to the King and Government of

England. Among the numerous writers on this momentous question, the most

luminous, the most eloquent, and the most forcible was _Thomas Paine_.

His pamphlet entitled 'Common Sense' was not only read, but understood,

by everybody; and those who regard the independence of the _United

States_ as a blessing will never cease to cherish the remembrance of

_Thomas Paine_. Whatever may have been his subsequent career--in

whatever light his religious principles may be regarded--it should never

be forgotten that _to him, more than to any single individual, was owing

the rapid diffusion of those sentiments and feelings which produced the

act of separation from Great Britain_."--_Ib._, pp. 343, 344.]

[Footnote 390: Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States,

p. 512.]

[Footnote 391: Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States,

Chap. xi., pp. 513-517.]

[Footnote 392: Allan's American Revolution, Chap, xii., pp. 344, 345.

"The question before the Committee was the portion of the _motion

relating to independence_, submitted by the Virginia delegates on the

7th of June. The New York members read their instructions, and were

excused from voting. Of the three delegates from Delaware, Rodney was

absent, Read in the negative, and thus the vote of that colony was lost.

South Carolina was in the negative; and so was Pennsylvania, by the

votes of Dickenson, Willing, Morris, and Humphries, against those of

Franklin, Morton, and Wilson. Nine colonies--New Hampshire, Connecticut,

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North

Carolina, Georgia--voted in the affirmative. The Committee rose, the

President resumed the chair, and Harrison reported the resolution as

having been agreed to. Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, said that

were the vote postponed till next day, he believed that his colleagues,

though they disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it for the

sake of unanimity. The final question, in accordance with this request,

was postponed until the next day; but it was agreed to go into Committee

on the draft of the Declaration.

"On the 2nd July, probably fifty members were present in Congress. After

disposing of the business of the morning, it resumed the resolution _on

independence_, and probably without much debate proceeded to vote.

McKean sent an express to Rodney, at Dover, which procured his

attendance, and secured the vote of Delaware in the affirmative; while

the same result was reached for Pennsylvania by Dickenson and Morris

absenting themselves, and allowing Franklin, Wilson, and Morton to give

the vote against Willing and Humphries. The South Carolina delegates

concluded to vote for the measure. Thus twelve colonies united in

adopting the following resolution:

"'That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and

independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the

British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the

State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.'"

(Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, Chap. xi., pp.

537, 538.)

On the adoption of this resolution, continues the same historian,

"Congress went immediately into Committee of the Whole to consider the

draft of a Declaration of Independence, or the form of announcing the

fact to the world. During the remainder of that day, and during the

sessions of the 3rd and 4th, the phraseology, allegations, and

principles of this paper were subjected to severe scrutiny. Its author

relates: 'The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth

keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many. For this reason,

those passages which conveyed censure on the people of England were

struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause, too,

reprobating the enslaving of the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in

complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to

restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, wished to

continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender

under these censures; for though their people had very few slaves

themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to

others.' (Memoirs of Jefferson, i. 15.) The striking out of the passage

declaring the slave trade 'piratical warfare against human nature

itself,' was deeply regretted by many of that generation. Other

alterations were for the better, making the paper more dispassionate and

terse, and--what was no small improvement--more brief and exact. On the

evening of the 4th the Committee rose, when Harrison reported the

Declaration as having been agreed upon. It was then adopted by twelve

States, unanimously." [That is, by the majority of the delegates of

twelve provinces, and, of course, _reported_ as "unanimous," according

to previous agreement.]--_Ib._, p. 539.]

CHAPTER XXVI.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE DISCUSSED.

The foregoing chapters bear ample testimony how heartily I have

sympathized with our elder brother colonists of America, in their

conception and manly advocacy and defence of their constitutional rights

as British subjects; how faithfully I have narrated their wrongs and

advocated their rights, and how utterly I have abhorred the despotic

conduct of George the Third, and of his corrupt Ministers and mercenary

and corrupted Parliament, in their unscrupulous efforts to wrest from

the American colonists the attributes and privileges of British freemen,

and to convert their lands, with their harbours and commerce, into mere

plantations and instruments to enrich the manufacturers and merchants of

England, and provide places of honour and emolument for the scions and

protegees of the British aristocracy and Parliament. But I cannot

sympathize with, much less defend, the leaders of the old American

colonists in the repudiating what they had professed from their

forefathers; in avowing what they had for many years denied; in making

their confiding and distinguished defenders in the British

Parliament--the Chathams, Camdens, Sherburnes, the Foxes, Burkes, and

Cavendishes--liars in presence of all Europe; in deliberately practising

upon their fellow-colonists what they had so loudly complained of

against the King and Parliament of Great Britain; in seeking the

alliance of a Power which had sought to destroy them for a hundred

years, against the land of their forefathers which had protected them

during that hundred years, and whose Administration had wronged and

sought to oppress them for only twelve years.

After many years of anxious study and reflection, I have a strong

conviction that the Declaration of American Independence, in 1776, was a

great mistake in itself, a great calamity to America as well as to

England, a great injustice to many thousands on both sides of the

Atlantic, a great loss of human life, a great blow to the real liberties

of mankind, and a great impediment to the highest Christian and

Anglo-Saxon civilization among the nations of the world.

In this summary statement of opinion--so contrary to the sentiments of

American historians and to popular feeling in the United States--I mean

no reflection on the motives, character, patriotism, and abilities of

those great men who advocated and secured the adoption of the

Declaration of Independence in the General Congress of 1776. I believe

America has never produced a race of statesmen equal in purity of

character, in comprehensiveness of views, in noble patriotism and moral

courage, to "the Fathers of the American Revolution." Their discussions

of public questions, during the eleven years which preceded the

Declaration of Independence, evince a clearness of discernment, an

accuracy of statement, a niceness of distinction, a thorough knowledge

of the principles of government, and the mutual relation of colonies and

the parent State, elegance of diction, and force of argument, not

surpassed in discussions of the kind in any age or country; their

diplomatic correspondence displays great superiority in every respect

over the English statesmen of the day, who sought to oppress them; the

correspondence of Washington with General Gage commanded alike the

admiration of Europe and the gratitude of America; the memorials and

other public papers transmitted to England by the American Congress, and

written by Jay and other members, drew forth from the Earl of Chatham,

in the House of Lords, January 20th, 1775, the following eulogy: "When

your lordships look at the papers transmitted to us from America--when

you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect

their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must avow that

in all my reading--and I have read Thucydides, and have studied and

admired the master States of the world--for solidity of reason, force of

sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult

circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the

General Congress at Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give

us nothing equal to it, and all attempts to impose servitude upon such a

mighty continental nation must be vain."

"We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can,

not when we must. These violent Acts must be repealed; you will repeal

them; I pledge myself for it, I stake my reputation on it, that you will

in the end repeal them."

(Those violent Acts were repealed three years afterwards.)

When the Earl of Shelburne read the reply, written by Jefferson, of the

Virginia Legislature, to Lord North's proposition, his Lordship said:

"In my life, I was never more pleased with a State paper than with the

Assembly of Virginia's discussion of Lord North's proposition. It is

masterly. But what I fear is that the evil is irretrievable."

Among the statesmanlike productions of that period, the correspondence

of Franklin, the masterly letters of Dickenson, the letters and State

papers of Samuel and John Adams, Jay and Livingstone, and of many

others, exhibit a scholarly race of statesmen and writers of whom any

nation or age might be proud.

But it must not be forgotten that the education of every one of these

great men, and their training in public affairs, was under English

constitutional government, for which every one of them (except Samuel

Adams) expressed their unqualified admiration, and to which they avowed

their unswerving attachment to within twelve months of the declaration

of independence. Though the United States can boast of many

distinguished scholars and politicians and jurists, I believe American

democracy has never produced a generation of scholarly, able, and

stainless statesmen, such as those who had received the whole of their

mental, moral, and political training when America formed a part of the

British empire.

It is not surprising, indeed, that the major part (for they were not

unanimous) of so noble and patriotic a class of statesmen should, by the

wicked policy and cruel measures against them by the worst

administration of government that ever ruled England, be betrayed into

an act which they had so many years disavowed. Placing, as they rightly

did, in the foreground the civil and religious liberties of Englishmen

as the first ingredient of the elements of political greatness and

social progress, they became exasperated into the conviction that the

last and only effective means of maintaining those liberties was to

sever their connection with England altogether, and declare their own

absolute independence. We honour the sentiments and courage which

prompted them to maintain and defend their liberties; we question not

the purity and patriotism of their motives in declaring independence as

the means of securing those liberties; but we must believe that, had

they maintained the integrity of their professions and positions for

even a twelvemonth longer, they would have achieved all for which they

had contended, would have become a free and happy country, as Canada now

is, beside the mother country and not in antagonism to her, maintaining

inviolate their national life and traditions, instead of forming an

alliance for bloody warfare with their own former and their mother

country's hereditary enemies.

It was unnatural and disgraceful for the British Ministry to employ

German mercenaries and savage Indians to subdue the American colonists

to unconditional obedience; but was it less unnatural for the colonists

themselves to seek and obtain the alliance of the King of France, whose

government was a despotism, and who had for a hundred years sought to

destroy the colonists, had murdered them without mercy, and employed by

high premiums the Indians to butcher and scalp men, women, and children

of the colonists--indeed, to "drive them into the sea," and to

exterminate them from the soil of America? Yet with such enemies of

civil and religious liberty, with such enemies of their own liberties,

and even their existence as Anglo-Saxons, the colonists sought and

obtained an alliance against the mother country, which had effectually,

and at an immense expenditure, defended them against the efforts of both

France and Spain to destroy them. Had the American colonists maintained

the position and professions after 1776, as they had maintained them

before 1776, presenting the contrast of their own integrity and unity

and patriotism to the perfidious counsels, mercenary and un-English

policy of the British Ministry and Parliament, they would have escaped

the disastrous defeats and bloodshed of 1777-8, and would have repeated

the victories which they had gained over the English soldiers in 1775

and the early part of 1776. Unprepared and sadly deficient in arms and

ammunition, they repulsed the regular English soldiers sent against them

at Concord, at Lexington, at Bunker's Hill; they had shut up as

prisoners the largest English army ever sent to New England, and, though

commanded by such generals as Howe and Clinton, compelled their

evacuation of the city of Boston. In the Southern States they had routed

the English forces, and had compelled the Governors of Virginia and

South and North Carolina to take refuge on board of English men-of-war.

Before the declaration of independence, the colonists fought with the

enthusiasm of Englishmen for Englishmen's rights, and the British

soldiers fought without heart against their fellow-subjects contending

for what many of both the soldiers and officers knew to be rights dear

to all true Englishmen; but when the Congress of the American colonies

declared themselves to be no longer Englishmen, no longer supporters of

the constitutional rights of Englishmen, but separationists from

England, and seeking alliance with the enemies of England, then the

English army felt that they were fighting against enemies and not

fellow-subjects, and fought with an energy and courage which carried

disaster, in almost every instance, to the heretofore united but now

divided colonists, until France and Spain came to their assistance.

With these preliminary and general remarks, we proceed to state more

specifically the grounds on which we regard, as a calamity to the

interests of true liberty and of civilization, the change of position,

policy, and principles avowed by the General Congress in the Declaration

of Independence, 1776.

I. The Declaration of Independence was a renunciation of all the

principles on which the General Congress, Provincial Legislatures, and

Conventions professed to act from the beginning of the contest. The

foregoing pages present abundant testimony and illustration how

earnestly, how constantly, how unanimously the American colonists

expressed their attachment to the mother country and to the principles

of the British Constitution--how indignantly they repelled, as an insult

and a slander, every suspicion and statement that they meditated or

desired _independence_, or that they would ever consent to sever the

ties of their connection with the mother country and the glorious

principles of her constitution of government.

In the same Congress of 1775, by which Washington was appointed

Commander-in-Chief, the higher departments of the army were organized.

Bills of credit to the amount of three millions were emitted to defray

the expenses of the war, and after the battles of Lexington and Bunker's

Hill, while the English army were shut in Boston by the Provincial

volunteers, a declaration was signed by Congress, justifying their

proceedings, but disdaining any idea of separation from England. They

say, "We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconstitutional

submission to the tyranny of irritated Ministers, or resistance by

force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the cost of this

contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honour,

justice, and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which

we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity

have a right to receive from us....

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most

solemnly, before God and the world, _declare_ that, exerting the utmost

energy of those powers which our beneficent Creator hath graciously

bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to

assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness

and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being

with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

"Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and

fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, _we assure them that we mean

not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted

between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored_. Necessity has

not yet driven us to that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any

other nation to war against them. _We have not raised armies with

ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain, and of establishing

independent States._ We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit

to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked

enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offence. They boast

of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder

conditions than servitude or death.

"In our native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birthright,

and which we ever enjoyed until the late violation of it, for the

protection of our property acquired solely by the honest industry of

our forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we

have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease

on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed

shall be removed, and not before."[393]

"Amidst these hostile operations, the voice of peace was yet

heard--allegiance to the King was still acknowledged, and a lingering

hope remained that an accommodation was not impossible. Congress voted a

petition to his Majesty, replete with professions of duty and

attachment; and addressed a letter to the people of England, conjuring

them, by the endearing appellations of 'friends, countrymen, and

brethren,' to prevent the dissolution of 'that connection which the

remembrance of former friendships, pride in the glorious achievements of

common ancestors, and affection for the heirs of their virtues had

heretofore maintained.' _They uniformly disclaimed any idea of

independence, and professed themselves to consider union with England,

on constitutional principles_, as the greatest blessing which could be

bestowed on them."[394]

It is needless to multiply authorities and illustrations; the whole

tenor of the history of the colonies, as presented in the preceding

chapters of this volume, evinces their universal appreciation of the

principles of the British Constitution and their universal attachment to

union with the mother country.[395]

Even in the spring of 1776, after months of agitation by advocates of

separation in various colonies, a majority of the delegates in Congress

were for weeks opposed to separation; and it required long preparation

to familiarize the minds of its advocates to separation, and to

reconcile any considerable number of colonists to hostile severance from

the land of their forefathers. It may easily be conceived what must have

been the shock to a large part, if not a majority, of the colonists, to

have burst upon them, after weeks' secret session of Congress, a

declaration which, under the term Independence, renounced all the

principles and associations in which they had been educated, which they

had often avowed and held dear from their ancestors, which proclaimed

their mother country their enemy, and denounced connection with her a

crime. Such a renunciation of the past, and wrenching from it, could not

otherwise than weaken the foundations of society and the obligation of

oaths, as may be seen by a comparison in these respects of the

sacredness of laws and oaths, and their administration in America before

and since the revolution.

II. The Declaration of Independence was a violation of good faith to

those statesmen and numerous other parties in England who had, in and

out of Parliament, supported the rights and character of the colonies

during the whole contest. They had all done so upon the ground that the

colonists were contending for the constitutional rights of Englishmen;

that they intended and desired nothing more. On the ground that the

colonists, like the barons of Runnymede, were contending for the sacred

rights of Englishmen, and relying on the faith of their declaration that

Englishmen they would ever remain, their cause was patriotically

espoused and nobly vindicated in England by Lords Chatham, Camden,

Shelburne, the Duke of Richmond, and others in the House of Lords; by

Messrs. Burke and Fox, Lord John Cavendish, Mr. Dunning (afterwards Lord

Ashburton), and others in the House of Commons; and by corporations of

cities and towns, and multitudes out of Parliament. Lord Mahon, in the

sixth volume of his History of England (pp. 35-37), relates that before

the Earl of Chatham introduced his famous "Provincial Bill for Settling

Troubles in America," and supported it by his masterly speeches in the

Lords, he sent for Dr. Franklin, the principal representative of the

colonists, to consult him and ascertain from him distinctly whether

there was any tendency or danger of the American colonies separating

from England, and was assured by Dr. Franklin that there was not the

least feeling in that direction; that the American colonies were

universally loyal to connection with the mother country, and desired and

contended for nothing more than the constitutional rights of

Englishmen.[396]

It was not till after this assurance, and it was under this conviction

and with this object, that the Earl of Chatham delivered those appeals

in behalf of America which electrified the British public, and gave tone

to the subsequent debates in both Houses of Parliament. These eloquent

and unanswerable defences of British rights, invaded and denied in

regard to the persons of the American colonists, were delivered in 1775

and the early part of 1776; but scarcely had their echoes died away on

the waves of the Atlantic, when news came from America that the

Congress, so warmly eulogized in the British Parliament for its fidelity

to English connection, as well as to the rights of England, had, after a

secret session of two months, renounced all connection with England, and

all acknowledgment of its authority and principles of government, thus

fulfilling the statements and predictions of the parliamentary enemies

of American rights, and presenting their advocates, Chatham, Camden,

Burke, etc., as liars and deceivers before the British nation and in the

face of all Europe. The Ministerial party triumphed; the advocates of

colonial rights were confounded, and their influence in and out of

Parliament was paralyzed. The power of the corrupt Ministers who had

been oppressing the colonies for ten years, was tottering to their fall;

they had played their last card; they had exhausted their credit; they

had staked their existence on the truth of the statements they had made,

and the accomplishment of the measures they had adopted; their measures

had failed; they saw that half-armed colonists had everywhere repulsed

the picked English generals and soldiers; their statements as to the

intentions and principles of the colonists would have also been

falsified had the Congress in 1776 adhered to the declaration of

principles and avowal of purposes which it had made in 1775; the friends

of American rights would have been triumphant, in and out of Parliament,

in England, and 1777 would doubtless have witnessed the overthrow of the

corrupt British Ministry, the constitutional freedom of the American

colonies in connection with the unity of the empire, instead of seven

years' bloody warfare, the destruction of the national life and of the

oneness of the Anglo-Saxon race.

III. But the Declaration of Independence on the part of its authors was

not only a violation of good faith to the statesmen and others in

England who had advocated the constitutional rights of the colonists, it

was also a violation both of good faith and justice to their colonial

fellow-countrymen who continued to adhere to connection with the mother

country upon the principles professed in all times past by the

separationists themselves.[397]

The adherents of connection with England had, with the exception of

certain office-holders and their relations, been as earnest advocates of

colonial rights as had the leaders of the separation. The opponents of

the constitutional rights of the colonies, in the colonies, were few and

far between--not numerous enough to form a party, or even to be called a

party. The Congress of 1775 declared the colonies to be "a unit" in

their determination to defend their rights, but disdained the idea of

separation from the mother country; and Mr. John Adams stated at the

same time: "All America is united in sentiment. When a masterly

statesman, to whom America has erected a statue in her heart for his

integrity, fortitude, and perseverance in her cause, invented a

Committee of Correspondence in Boston, did not every colony, nay, every

county, city, hundred, and town upon the whole continent adopt the

measure as if it had been a revelation from above? Look over the

resolves of the colonies for the past year; you will see that one

understanding governs, one heart animates the whole."[398]

Such were the sentiments and feelings of America in resisting the

innovations upon their rights of a British Ministry, while they denied

the idea of separation from the mother country as a calumny; and such

were the grounds on which millions in England and Scotland, in and out

of Parliament, supported them.[399]

"Though that measure (independence), a few months before, was not only

foreign from their wishes, but the object of their abhorrence, the

current suddenly became so strong in its favour that it bore down all

opposition. The multitude was hurried down the stream; but some worthy

men could not easily reconcile themselves to the idea of an eternal

separation from a country to which they had long been bound by the most

endearing ties." (Ramsay's History of the United States, Vol. II., pp.

161, 162.)

When, therefore, the Congress at Philadelphia voted, by a majority of

one or two, but declaring that their vote should be published as

unanimous, to renounce all the professions of the past of connection

with the mother country, to declare her their enemy, and to avow eternal

separation from her, it may be easily conceived how a large portion of

the colonists would feel that their confidence had been betrayed; that

the representations they had made to English statesmen would bear the

stamp of untruth; that their hopes had been blasted, and that they were

now to be treated as rebels and traitors for adhering to the faith of

their forefathers; for, as Mr. Allan remarks, the Declaration of

Independence "left no neutrals. He who was not for independence,

unconditional independence, was an enemy."[400] Thus the many tens of

thousands of colonists who adhered to the faith of their forefathers,

and the traditions and professions of their own personal history, were,

by a single act of Congress, declared "enemies" of their country,

"rebels," and even "traitors," because they would not renounce their

oath of allegiance, and swear allegiance to a self and newly-created

authority, to relinquish the defence of the rights of Englishmen for the

theory of republican independence, adherence to which had been advocated

by the Chathams and Burkes in the British Parliament, in preference to

the new doctrines propounded by the leaders in the Philadelphia

Congress, for maintaining the unity and life of a great nation rather

than dismember and destroy it. Was it doing as one would be done by? Was

it not a violation of good faith, and hard treatment, for men to be

declared by a new tribunal criminals in July, for maintaining what all

had held to be loyal and patriotic in January? All the arguments and

appeals of the Northern States against the separation of the Southern

States from the Republic, as destructive of the life of the nation, in

the recent civil war of 1864-1869, were equally strong, on the same

ground, against the separation of the American colonies from the mother

country in the civil war of 1776-1783. The United Empire Loyalists of

that day were, as the conservators of the life of the nation, against

the dismemberment of the empire, as are the Americans of the Northern

States of the present day the conservators of the life of their nation

in opposing the dismemberment of the Republic.

IV. But this is not all. This Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776, was

the commencement of persecutions, proscriptions, and confiscations of

property against those who refused to renounce the oaths which they had

taken, as well as the principles and traditions which had, until then,

been professed by their persecutors and oppressors as well as by

themselves. The declaration of independence had been made in the name

and for the professed purposes of liberty; but the very first acts under

it were to deprive a large portion of the colonists not only of liberty

of action, but liberty of thought and opinion--to extract from them

oaths and declarations which could not have been sincere, and which

could have been little better than perjuries, for the sole purpose of

saving life, liberty, or property. They were a numerous and intelligent

portion of the community; were equally interested in the welfare of the

country as their assailants, instead of being designated by every

epithet of opprobrium, and denied the freedom of opinion and privileges

of citizenship.[401] Mr. Elliott remarks:--

"The Tories comprised a large number, among whom were many rich,

cultivated, and kindly people; these last, above all, needed watching,

and were most dangerous. In looking over the harsh treatment of the

Tories by the rebels, it should be remembered that a covert enemy is

more dangerous than an open one, and that the Tories comprised both of

these. Many men of property and character in Massachusetts were in

favour of England, partly from conviction and partly from fear. That

large and often cultivated class called "Conservatives," who hold by the

past rather than hope for the future, and are constitutionally timid,

feared change; they were naturally Tories. Most of the Episcopalians in

New England (though not in Virginia) opposed the revolutionary

movements. They had felt the oppression and contempt of the New England

Congregationalists, and looked to the English Government and the English

Church for help. But in Virginia, where they were strong, this was not

so; and there the Episcopalians were among the warmest asserters of the

rights of man."

"In New York there was at first a very large proportion of Tories; in

1776, not less than twelve hundred and ninety-three persons, in the

County of Queen's alone, professed themselves subjects to the King. In

Suffolk County, eight hundred enrolled themselves as King's militia."

"In New Jersey, Governor Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, led the

King's friends, and was active against the Americans until it became

necessary to put him in confinement. The war carried on between Tories

and Whigs was more merciless than any other, and more cruel and wanton

than that of the Indians."

"Laws were made in Rhode Island against all who supplied the enemy with

provisions, or gave them information.

"In Connecticut the Tories were not allowed to speak or write against

Congress or the Assembly.