Independence (63 page)

Jefferson’s lengthiest section was a bill of indictment cataloging the despotic design of Britain’s rulers. He levied twenty-one accusations of illegal and tyrannical behavior against George III, shameful actions that unmasked the “character” of this man and revealed him as “unfit to be the ruler of a people.” Although Parliament was never mentioned by name—Jefferson alluded to it as “their legislature,” differentiating it from America’s legislatures—he charged it with nine additional despotic acts. Somewhat vaguely, Jefferson grouped the charges: He commenced with allegations that the king had refused to govern or to permit the colonists to govern themselves properly; next, he stressed how the rulers in London had violated the rights of the colonists; and finally, he charged the Crown with violence and cruelty toward the colonists.
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He began with a vague accusation. The monarch, he wrote, had “refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” That was probably a reference to the Privy Council’s disallowance of some 5 percent of laws passed by colonial assemblies during the 150 years of colonial subservience, but Jefferson must also have had in mind the Crown’s rejection of the three Virginia laws passed since the 1760s that would have forbidden the further importation of African slaves. So that no one misunderstood, he later specifically arraigned the king for having waged “cruel war against human nature itself” by having refused to stop the Atlantic slave trade. Jefferson did not mention the most famous complaint of the colonists—“imposing taxes on us without our consent”—until he had arraigned king or Parliament on sixteen other charges. Parliament’s claim to have the authority to “legislate for us in all cases whatsoever” was twenty-second on his list.

Despite all the heated debates in Congress over Parliament’s power to regulate American commerce, Jefferson was silent on that score. However, he wrote that London had “sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people,” an illusion in part to the increase in customs officials after 1765. The Coercive Acts were condemned in several separate items in the list, as was the Quartering Act, American Prohibitory Act, Quebec Act, and the Crown’s efforts during the past several years to eliminate an independent judiciary in the colonies. The king was also charged with keeping a standing army in America in peacetime, making war on the colonists, burning its towns, inciting Indians to go on the warpath, and hiring foreign mercenaries. For having fomented slave insurrections, Jefferson in effect branded George III a war criminal, writing that he had enticed “those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering” their masters and other colonists.
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Jefferson additionally took aim at the monarch for having “endeavored to prevent the population of these states,” a reference to parliamentary legislation in 1773, which restricted emigration to the colonies.
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No charge brought by Jefferson was composed in a more impassioned manner than his arraignment of the king for his complicity in the African slave trade and for his allegedly having imposed slavery on the colonists. Jefferson wrote that the king had enslaved “a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” By engaging in “this piratical warfare,” Britain’s monarch had acted as an “
infidel
” ruler, not as “the
Christian
king of Great Britain.” Furthermore, he had disallowed “every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” If this “assemblage of horrors” was not sufficient, the king was “now … exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering” the American colonists.

Every colonist who supported the rebellion, and every member of Congress, would have applauded the final charge on Jefferson’s list: “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.”

The final section contained Lee’s resolution on independence, although to it Jefferson added a flourish of rhetoric: “these states, reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the kings of Great Britain, & … we utterly dissolve all political connection between us and … Great Britain.… [W]e do assert and declare these colonies to be free & independent states” that now “have full power … to do all [the] acts and things which independent states may of right do.”
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Jefferson and the Committee of Five faced a precise and pressing deadline. The document they were to write was to be submitted by July 1, only twenty days after the committee’s creation. As some time was spent discussing the nature of the document and selecting a draftsman, and as there were three Sabbath days between them and their target date, the document’s author and his colleagues had only some fourteen to sixteen working days in which to complete the task. They succeeded. Once the draft was “approved by them [the committee],” Jefferson noted in an offhand manner in the terse log of proceedings that he kept, “I reported it to the house on Friday the 28th of June when it was read and ordered to lie on the table”—that is, not to be considered by Congress—until the following Monday, July 1.
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At the time the Declaration of Independence was submitted, the floodgates for independence had fully opened. By then, two thirds of the towns in Massachusetts had urged a final break with Great Britain, usually by a unanimous vote.
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Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Delaware had authorized their congressmen to vote for independence, though the latter—like North Carolina two months earlier—had not actually mentioned the word. It simply authorized its delegates to act with others to secure American “liberty, safety, and interests.” During the third week in June, New Jersey instructed its delegates to make “the United Colonies independent of
Great Britain
,” prompting a member of its assembly to remark that “We are passing the Rubicon and our Delegates in Congress … will vote plump”—that is, one and all would vote for independence. New Jersey even elected five new congressmen, replacing the delegation that in mid-May had voted against Congress’s resolution excoriating royal government in the colonies. The new congressmen were “all independent souls,” remarked a member of the New Jersey Provincial Congress. Maryland likewise freed its congressmen to vote for independence, taking that step on the very day that the Committee of Five submitted the draft Declaration to Congress.
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The proponents of independence had always regarded Pennsylvania as the major stumbling block to congressional unanimity in the battle for American independence. But it too came around in June, though an internal political revolution unlike that in any other province was needed. As intended, Congress’s May 15 recommendation that the colonies adopt governments equal to the exigencies of the times lit the fuse for the final explosion in Pennsylvania. Within twenty-four hours of Congress’s action, radicals in Philadelphia summoned a mass meeting on May 20. Taking “the sense of the people,” this meeting of some four thousand Philadelphians, who gathered in the rain on the State House lawn, not only called for a constitutional convention; it loudly, and “with great Unanimity,” condemned the Pennsylvania assembly’s instructions forbidding its congressmen from voting for independence. Fighting to escape extinction, the assembly at last caved in, withdrawing the instructions that Dickinson had crafted for the congressional delegation six months earlier. On June 8, by a three-to-one margin, the Pennsylvania assembly authorized its congressmen to vote for whatever they believed was essential for securing American liberty and safety. Two weeks later an extralegal Conference of Committees, meeting at Carpenters’ Hall to plan for the election of the constitutional convention, voted its “willingness to concur in a vote of the congress, declaring the united colonies free and independent states.” By late June, therefore, Pennsylvania’s congressmen had two sets of instructions. Each sanctioned a vote for independence.
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On the day before Congress was scheduled to take up the question of independence, Francis Lightfoot Lee wrote to his brother Richard Henry in Williamsburg that “Our affairs in Canada are … brot to a conclusion.” All American troops had “retire[d] out of the Country,” leaving the colonies to “contend with all the bad consequences” that must flow from Britain’s possession of Canada, including what he thought was the likelihood of imminent assaults on Crown Point and Ticonderoga. To his “dismal Acct,” Lee added that word had just reached Philadelphia that Howe’s invasion flotilla had been spotted off the coast of New York. It was a massive fleet, the largest expeditionary force that Great Britain had ever assembled, or would muster again until World Wars I and II. One New Yorker described what he saw as “a forest of masts,” some 130 vessels bearing a portion of the huge force that Lord North had gathered after learning of the colonists’ armed resistance at Concord and along Battle Road.
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There was no sign of panic in Congress. The American forces had been routed in Canada, but most believed the poor showing had been uncharacteristic. The Canadian campaign had been “thrown away … in a most Scandalous Manner,” one remarked, probably thinking of the poor leadership exhibited by Wooster, Sullivan, and Schuyler, and also probably speaking for most of his congressional colleagues. Congress devoted more attention to the looming battle for New York. Most were optimistic, confident of Washington’s abilities and also buoyed by the realization that the British forces would not have the numerical superiority they had enjoyed in Canada in May and June. Many also believed, as did John Adams, that the war was “in all … Probability … in its Infancy.” America would have many advantages in a protracted war, especially if France provided assistance.
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Independence first had to be declared, of course, and the “grand question,” as one congressman referred to it, was scheduled for debate on July 1. The proponents of independence were confident. On the day that Jefferson submitted his draft, North Carolina’s Joseph Hewes predicted that Congress would declare independence “by a great Majority.” John Adams felt that most understood that the realities of war demanded that “we … must be independent states,” though he knew that “Still Objections are made to a Declaration of it.” In fact, at that same moment, Edward Rutledge remained confident that he and his fellow foes of independence might prevail. It “will depend in a great Measure,” he thought, “upon the Exertions of the Honest and sensible part of the Members” of Congress.
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CHAPTER 13

“M
AY
H
EAVEN
P
ROSPER THE
N
EW
B
ORN
R
EPUBLIC
”

S
ETTING
A
MERICA
F
REE

JOHN ADAMS HAD WAITED
for this day for a very long time, at least since April 1775, when the war began, and probably since the summer of 1773, when he read Thomas Hutchinson’s purloined letters sent to Boston by Franklin. It was Monday, July 1, 1776, the day Congress had designated for a resumption of the debate on independence.

Adams rose early, as was his custom. Before leaving for the State House, he wrote to Archibald Bulloch, a Georgian who had been in Congress in the fall of 1775 but who had returned to Savannah to become chief executive of the provincial convention (his title was “President of Georgia”). “This morning is assigned for the greatest Debate of all,” Adams told his former colleague. Congress was to consider a “Declaration that these Colonies are free and independent States, and this day or Tomorrow is to determine its Fate,” said Adams, who could barely hide his exhilaration. He expected Congress to decide in favor of independence. In fact, Adams wrote to Bulloch as if Congress had already made its decision: “May Heaven prosper, the new born Republic,—and make it more glorious than any former Republic has been.”
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During the past few weeks Adams had rejoiced at his “ride in the Whirlwind,” as he put it. From the moment in February that Congress learned of the American Prohibitory Act, he had sensed a dramatic shift in the mood of many of his fellow deputies. “We are not in a very submissive Mood,” Adams said at the time, adding that he believed “We are hastening rapidly to great Events.” Throughout the spring he had seen abundant signs that the residents of Philadelphia shared the outlook of most members of Congress. Local military units paraded and drilled almost daily in the city’s streets, and the St. George’s Day Festival, an English holiday that had been celebrated every April 23 for as long as anyone could remember, had been canceled in 1776. Adams’s barber, John Byrne, was the source of much of his information about the sentiments of ordinary Philadelphians. A “little dapper fellow” with an “active and lively, Tongue as fluent and voluble as you please,” Byrne frequented the city’s grog shops every evening and the next morning, while shaving Adams, related what he had heard. Before April ended he was telling Adams that nearly every Philadelphian was “zealous on the side of America.”
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