Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution: A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence (19 page)

The battles of Lexington and Concord, occurring less than a month before the Continental Congress reconvened in May 1775, provided one flash point, transforming the conflict between Crown and colonies from a political dispute to a military confrontation. But even after the opposing patriot and British armies had taken up arms, most Americans hoped for a solution that would not force them to abandon their loyalties as British subjects. As the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord escalated into full-scale war—Bunker Hill in June 1775, military clashes spreading to a new front in western New York and Quebec in the fall of 1775, Virginia royal governor Lord Dunmore’s promise of freedom to slaves who deserted their masters and fought on the British side to put down incipient rebellion in that colony—it became more and more difficult to imagine a path toward reconciliation.

Still the delegates sought that reconciliation. John Dickinson, a delegate to the Continental Congress from Pennsylvania, had already made a name for himself in the preceding years as an articulate spokesman for the constitutional rights of Americans. But Dickinson, trained as a lawyer in London, also had a deep reverence for the English constitution.
If only
the king and Parliament could be persuaded to return to the true principles of that constitution and to restore their liberties! In August 1775 Dickinson persuaded the Congress to draft the Olive Branch Petition, which firmly reiterated the Americans’ constitutional objections to Parliament’s attempts to tax and legislate for the colonies but at the same time expressed affection for and allegiance to the British Empire. Notably, the petition was sent, not to Parliament, but to King George III, for even moderate Americans like Dickinson had reached the point of denying all parliamentary authority over the colonies.

WHATEVER HOPES OF ENLISTING THE AID OF their sovereign that men like Dickinson may have entertained, they were coldly dashed by late October 1775, when the Congress received news that the king had declared the colonies in a state of rebellion even before receiving the Olive Branch Petition. When the petition finally reached the king, he refused to look at it. To make matters worse, in his October speech at the opening of Parliament (which the Continental Congress only learned about in early January 1776), George III denounced the Congress as “promoters of [a] desperate conspiracy.” Its petitions, he charged, were only a ruse designed to lull the British while the delegates were preparing for a “general revolt,” with the ultimate goal being the establishment of “an independent empire.” And although the news would not reach America until the end of February, Parliament, at the king’s urging, had passed the Prohibitory Act, which effectively declared war on American commerce on the high seas. With the adamant refusal of the king to help turn the tide of events back toward reconciliation, the next move would be up to the Americans.

At nearly the same time that George III was making pronouncements that dimmed the hopes of those in Congress who yearned for some sort of honorable path toward reconciliation, a scruffy, recent English immigrant to Pennsylvania, one Thomas Paine, wrote a pamphlet,
Common Sense,
that would bring about a revolution in public opinion. Paine had nothing but contempt for the “boasted constitution of England,” which was, he derisively commented, “noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected,” but wholly inadequate for a free people in a new world. And the greatest absurdity of that constitution, he exclaimed, was the very idea of a hereditary monarch. His attack on the monarchy in general, and on George III in particular, was devastating and, as it turned out, unanswerable. John Dickinson, whose devotion to the English constitution formed the core of his desire to stay within the British Empire, was rendered mute in the face of Paine’s assault. And General George Washington, now leading the Continental army’s troops in battle, was so moved by Paine’s pamphlet that he had his officers read it to his men in the field to inspire them to fight for the common cause.

The period between the publication of
Common Sense
in mid-January and the decision to declare independence in early July was a chaotic one. At this stage the decision on independence became not one but thirteen separate decisions, as political leaders and ordinary citizens in each of the colonies read and then debated the argument in
Common Sense
. In Congress, those continuing to hope for reconciliation found their numbers declining and their arguments less persuasive. Nevertheless, even those delegates most committed to independence knew that the drama needed to be played out in each of the individual colonies, for the authority of the Congress was ultimately dependent on public opinion beyond the walls of the Pennsylvania State House.

By April of 1776, most, but by no means a decisive majority, of the colonies appeared ready to declare independence. A few—Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey—had, with varying degrees of emphasis, instructed their delegates to the Congress to
oppose
any resolution for independence. But as the possibilities for reconciliation with Great Britain dwindled (the British government had indicated that it might send peace commissioners to America to attempt to negotiate a settlement, but the commissioners never arrived), those colonies that had argued for caution were left with few plausible alternatives.

On June 7, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced into the Congress a resolution sent to him by a specially called convention in his home colony. The resolution proposed:

Agreement on these three items—independence; foreign assistance; and, perhaps most important, union—constituted the essential preconditions for a formal declaration of independence.

Even with those resolutions before the Congress, the delegates from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland remained opposed, and others seemed to be on the fence. As a consequence, the Congress postponed debate on the resolutions from Virginia until July 1. But on that day, as debate on the resolutions began, nearly everyone gathered in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House knew that they had reached a moment of truth. During the first go-around, on July 1, Pennsylvania and South Carolina opposed the resolution for independence, with Delaware divided. And New York’s delegates had to sit on their hands, for they had been given explicit instructions by their legislature
not
to vote on any measure aimed at independence.

Finally, on July 2 the votes fell into place. An additional Delaware delegate, Caesar Rodney, arrived in Philadelphia that day, voting in favor of independence and breaking the deadlock in that delegation. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, who had opposed independence, deferred to his older, more politically powerful brother, John Rutledge, and agreed to support the resolutions. The situation with the Pennsylvania delegation was the most interesting. Although prominent Pennsylvania delegates like John Dickinson and Robert Morris continued to oppose independence, they realized that their views were out of step with those of their constituents. Recognizing that their duty to their constituents was more important than their personal feelings, they voluntarily absented themselves from the voting on Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence on July 2. The effect of their absence was to tip the balance within the Pennsylvania delegation toward independence. The New Yorkers still sat on their hands, waiting for their legislature to have a change of heart. But at least they had not voted no, allowing John Adams to crow that the “resolution was passed without one dissenting colony.” The following day he wrote his wife, Abigail, in exultation: “the second day of July, 1776 will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival.” He missed the mark by two days.

The man most closely associated with American independence has turned out not to be its most indefatigable advocate, John Adams, but rather a relative newcomer to the political scene: the soft-spoken, lanky Virginian Thomas Jefferson. On June 11, three weeks before the formal vote on independence, the Continental Congress had appointed a committee composed of Jefferson, Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston to prepare a declaration of independence, in case such a declaration should be necessary.

It was of course Jefferson who took on the task of completing a first draft of the Declaration of Independence. But if we are to believe the testimony of John Adams, that was not a foregone conclusion. According to Adams, when the committee first met it decided that Jefferson would be given that task, but Jefferson proposed instead that Adams do it. Then followed an exchange in which each man tried to persuade the other to write the draft. Adams argued that Jefferson should do it because he was a Virginian, “and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business,” a reference to the fact that New Englanders like Adams were seen by many as the troublemakers who had gotten the colonies into the conflict with England in the first place, and that it would look better if the more conservative Virginians took the lead in the movement for independence. Adams went on to say that “I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise.” That, unfortunately, was probably true, for Adams’s curmudgeonly nature, together with his often abrasive insistence on independence even before some of the other colonies were ready for it, had earned him at least a few enemies. Adams’s third reason was that he believed Jefferson could “write ten times better than I can.” It is hard to imagine Adams admitting that anyone was a better writer, and indeed Jefferson—again, long after the fact—had a rather different recollection. According to Jefferson, the decision about who was to write the draft of the Declaration was straightforward: the members of the committee “unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught [and] I consented.” Jefferson went on to recall that at that point he retired to his rented rooms at Seventh and Market Streets in Philadelphia and wrote a draft, and before sending it formally to the committee for their comments, he informally asked both Benjamin Franklin and John Adams to suggest corrections. According to Jefferson, “their alterations were two or three only, and merely verbal.” At which point, Jefferson recalled, he wrote out a new copy of the document and reported it to the committee, which, without making alterations, sent it to the full Congress for its consideration.

In fact, the rough draft of Jefferson’s Declaration that was submitted to the Congress had a total of twenty-six alterations—two in Adams’s handwriting, five in Franklin’s, and sixteen in Jefferson’s. And three additional paragraphs were added as well. It appears likely that many of the changes were the result of further conversations that Jefferson had with Adams and Franklin, both of whom made substantial contributions to the revisions of Jefferson’s original draft. When comparing the two drafts, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the revisions were made by Jefferson or made by others but recorded in Jefferson’s handwriting, but there is no doubt that the revisions did make the document both more elegant and more forceful. To give just a few examples:

Both of these sets of changes made the document both more concise and elegant, and by doing so, more powerful.

The list of grievances that followed was anything but a fair-minded and evenhanded assessment of the conflict between Great Britain and America. Rather, it was aimed at persuading those Americans who remained undecided to support the patriot cause and, equally important, at signaling to potential European allies, particularly France, that America was serious about its intent to break with England—an action that, if successful, would significantly weaken the British Empire in North America.