The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (70 page)

Few delegates in the spring of 1775 advocated independence, and of those few none advocated a declaration of independence. Rather they seem to have believed that though a try at reconciliation would fail, it must be made, if for no other reason than that most Americans preferred reconciliation.
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John Adams preferred a separation from Britain though, as he said of himself, he was "as fond of reconciliation, if we could reasonably entertain Hopes of it upon a constitutional Basis, as any man." But Adams did not believe that such hopes were reasonable because the king, Parliament, the administration, and the electorate "have been now for many years gradually trained and disciplined by Corruption" in their oppressive ways. The conclusion seemed clear that "the Cancer [of official corruption] is too deeply rooted, and too far spread to be cured by anything short of cutting it out entire."
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To have any chance of success, political surgery required that the people support it. But the American people seem to have been divided just as the delegates were, with most probably opposing such drastic action. Adams likened the people to a "vast unwieldy machine"; they could not be forced and must be allowed to run on in their own ways in the expectation that eventually they would recognize the best means of protecting their liberties.
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In any case neither Adams nor anyone else suggested independence in May. Adams told the delegates that an imperial connection might be maintained through the king. Parliament, however, should play no part in governing America. John Dickinson disagreed and advocated concessions. Let us pay for the tea destroyed at Boston, he proposed, and let us concede Parliament's right to regulate our trade, and let us petition the king once more for a redress of grievances.
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The weeks that followed saw these differences imperfectly reconciled in the actions of Congress. The Congress authorized the raising of an army a couple of days before the battle of Bunker Hill, and almost immediately afterwards George Washington set off from Philadelphia to assume its command. John Dickinson and the moderates around him did not oppose the creation of the army; nor did they attempt to substitute one of their number for Washington, who was known to be skeptical of peaceful approaches to Britain. Early in July they persuaded Congress of the wisdom of another petition to the king, the so-called Olive Branch petition, in effect asking him to find a way out of the conflict.

John Adams despised the weakness he detected in the petition but was resigned to oscillations in congressional policy. Though Adams's spirit was rarely calm, it could find some ease in the fact that the number

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²
Ibid.,
118.

³
Ibid.

⁴
Jack N. Rakove, "The Decision for American Independence: A Reconstruction",
PAH
, 10 ( 1975), 238-39.

of delegates favoring firmness was growing. One, Thomas Jefferson, arrived in Philadelphia just about the time that news came from Bunker Hill. And delegates already there were finding it increasingly difficult to advocate reconciliation as British responses became known. 5

John Dickinson felt more divided than most: at the time he wrote the second petition to the king he was working with Jefferson on the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms. Jefferson wrote the first version, which Dickinson, obviously feeling compelled after Bunker Hill to show that he was as fierce for liberty as anyone else, made tougher. The declaration, which indicted Parliament for having "attempted to effect their cruel and impolitic Purpose of enslaving these Colonies by Violence, and have thereby rendered it necessary for us to close with their last Appeal from Reason to Arms," was approved on July 6. Two days later Congress agreed on the second petition to the king, and at the end of the month it rejected North's so-called Conciliatory Proposal. 6

There may have been something approaching a "whimsical cast" to these summer proceedings -- so John Adams characterized them. Congress could not seem to make up its mind. It prepared for war while it begged for peace; it proclaimed its determination to protect American liberties while it petitioned for reconciliation; it expressed respect for the king while it promised death to his armies. 7

Yet there was nothing whimsical in the tendency of action in these hot weeks. Men died at Bunker Hill, and each time an American died so did some part of moderation. Death and suffering had more than a local effect in New England. The news of the fighting spread, and soldiers from the middle and southern colonies began to march toward Boston. As they left home so also did the spirit of compromise.

Blundering British officials also helped destroy whatever support moderation possessed. Few in the ministry seem to have kept their balance once the war began. North's impulses remained peaceful, though hardly strong enough to soothe an angry king. Dartmouth might have helped North contain the ugly desires for war, but Dartmouth was not widely

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⁵
On Jefferson arrival in Congress, see Merrill D. Peterson,
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography
( New York, 1970), 79-81.

⁶
The "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking up Arms" has been reprinted in
TJ Papers
, I, 213-18. The quotation is on 213. See also Franklin's assessment in a letter to Joseph Priestley, July 7, 1775, in
LMCC
, I, 156, and John Adams's of July 11, 1775,
ibid.,
162
.

⁷
LMCC
, I, 152.

trusted and left office in the autumn. His successor, Lord George Germain, was genuinely tough and fed the vulgar desire to put the Americans in their place.
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News of the battles at Lexington and Concord had made compromise all the more unlikely, and Bunker Hill had hardened resolves. Late in August the king expressed much of the public, and private, outrage at American behavior by proclaiming that the, colonies were in "an open and avowed rebellion." Two months later in an accounting to Parliament he explained that a "desperate conspiracy" existed in America to make a rebellious war which is "manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire."
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Many in Parliament had doubtless come to the same conclusion when fighting began in America. They now followed the lead of the ministry and just before the year ended passed, on December 22, 1775, the American Prohibitory Act, which ordered all trade with the colonies stopped. This statute made American ships and their cargoes fair game for the Royal Navy; all ships trading with the colonies were to be "forfeited to his Majesty, as if the same were the ships and the effects of open enemies, and shall be so adjudged, deemed, and taken in all courts of admiralty, and in all other courts whatsoever."
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Had the king, his ministry, and the Parliament attempted to persuade the Americans to separate themselves from the empire they could not have chosen much more effective means than those of April onward. The British army had marched and killed on two dreadful occasions; the petition of the Congress had been considered unworthy of answer; the Americans had been described as traitors and rebels who must be subdued by force. At first sight, shutting off American commerce may not seem such a portentous act. Yet Americans considered it to be, and rightly so, for it demonstrated once more that the king's government meant what it said about crushing rebellion. Words such as "traitors," "conspiracy," and "enemies" allowed little room for negotiation, and what little there was shrank as the months slipped by. The British army continued to menace New England, and the resolve of Parliament and the ministry to destroy the American economy became clear.
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When news of British actions began arriving in October, Americans learned that the king had proclaimed them rebels. Not long afterwards, news came of the king's refusal to receive the petition Congress had approved in July, and then came word that more troops were on the way. By February 1776, when Congress received the Prohibitory Act, the possibility of a reconciliation was remote.

Still Congress held back from declaring independence. It was waiting for unmistakable evidence that the American people favored a permanent separation. And it hesitated to act while a remnant of its membership retained hope that negotiations that might heal the terrible wounds of the last year were possible.

In several colonies, British officials proved that the king's ministry had no monopoly on blundering. During the summer the governors of North Carolina and South Carolina, after heavy-handed attempts at coercing their assemblies, simply turned tail and fled to warships off the coast. They may have consciously followed the example of Virginia's governor, Lord Dunmore, who had preceded them to the safety of a royal warship. There he sat while the Convention, the old House of Burgesses under a new name, took over the task of governing. Dunmore had dissolved the Burgesses when they rejected North's conciliatory proposal. By November, Dunmore was feeling frustration as he sat on a swaying deck and contemplated British power, which like himself was very much at sea. Early in the month he called upon the slaves in Virginia to rebel and promised them their freedom if they joined his forces and fought their masters. Whatever loyalty there was in Virginia pretty much flickered out with Dunmore's call. The possibility of a slave rebellion was never far out of white consciousness, a possibility regarded with horror. Dunmore added to white revulsion on January 1, 1776, when he ordered Norfolk shelled by ships of the British navy. The town burned in a fire which, in a sense, was seen all over Virginia.
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During these months of British mistakes, the old colonial governments searched for a new basis of authority. Massachusetts felt especially hard pressed: in the preceding year Parliament had revised its government in unacceptable ways. Now facing the war around Boston, the Provincial Congress asked the Continental Congress what it should do -- abide by statutes which had helped provoke the fighting or return to the charter

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of 1691? In June the Provincial Congress was advised that Massachusetts need not observe the requirements of the Massachusetts Government Act, one of the Intolerable Acts, but might in effect revert to its old practice, though of course it would not have a royal governor. This "solution" was realistic in that it satisfied prevailing opinion within Massachusetts and maintained a traditional basis of authority. Five months later Congress edged a little closer to telling the colonies to act as if they were independent by advising the New Hampshire Convention to call for a representation of the people. The people in convention would, if they thought it necessary, "establish such a form of government, as, in their judgment, will best produce the happiness of the people," governing as long as the "present dispute" with Britain continued. Soon after, the same recommendation was made to South Carolina in response to a request for guidance.
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