Independence (69 page)

Those who were absent that day subsequently affixed their signatures. Elbridge Gerry, for instance, “worn out of Health, by the Fatigues of this station,” had left Philadelphia in mid-July for rest and recuperation at home. He so badly wanted his name on the Declaration of Independence that he proposed it be added by proxy. That was not necessary. Congress wanted everyone who had voted for independence to sign the Declaration, and it even gave leave to sign to those who had been delegates during the spring debates on independence but had not been present for any of the votes between July 1 and July 4. It even permitted those who had voted against independence but subsequently changed their minds to sign. It also welcomed the signatures of those who entered Congress between July 5 and mid-autumn.
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Every congressman who voted for independence on July 2 ultimately signed the Declaration of Independence, including Gerry, who scribbled his signature sometime after he returned to Philadelphia on September 2. Several who signed the document had not voted for independence. North Carolina’s William Hooper signed, though he had been absent from late March until mid-July. Richard Henry Lee, Samuel Chase, George Wythe, and Oliver Wolcott had gone home on the eve of the vote on independence and had come back to Philadelphia at varying times—it was October before Wolcott returned—and each signed shortly after resuming his seat.
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Congress permitted Connecticut’s William Williams, who had been elected in October 1775 but had not come to Philadelphia until four weeks after independence was declared, to sign the Declaration. Maryland’s Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed, though he did not become a member of Congress until July 17. Given the political upheaval in Pennsylvania, five new faces were added to that state’s delegation and took their seats between July 22 and September 6; each—Rush, George Clymer, George Ross, George Taylor, and James Smith—signed the Declaration. Four New York delegates, who were not authorized to vote for independence until July 9, eventually signed the document. That contingent did not include Robert R. Livingston, who left Congress on July 5 and never returned. New Hampshire’s Matthew Thornton was probably the last man to sign the Declaration of Independence. Elected in September, he could not have signed it until after he took his seat on November 4.
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Two congressmen who had voted against independence on July 2 ultimately signed: George Read and Robert Morris.

Before all the signatures were affixed to the Declaration of Independence, one final stab at reconciliation had to be played out. The Howe brothers, the long-awaited peace commissioners, had arrived in New York in July. At the time they had sailed, both William and Richard Howe still thought it possible that war might be avoided by a last-minute peace accord. However, just as each soldier-commissioner disembarked on Staten Island, American independence had been declared and was being celebrated with gusto. The Howe brothers immediately sent Germain a copy of the Declaration of Independence, to which they appended their belief that there was “no prospect of a disposition in those who now hold the supreme authority over the colonies to make any advances towards a reconciliation.”
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Even so, the Howes launched their mission by contacting both General Washington and Benjamin Franklin, hoping that the former might agree to talks and that the latter would serve as a conduit for opening discussions with Congress. They got nowhere with either man. Washington accepted their invitation to meet with one of General William Howe’s officers, but it was an unproductive get-together. The American commander was willing to discuss the release of the American prisoners of war held in Canada, but when he made clear that he had no authority to engage in peace negotiations, the talks abruptly ended.
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With the authorization of Congress, Franklin answered Lord Richard Howe’s missive on July 20. His response was not heartening. As it appeared that the peace commissioners were to be unable to do more than extend “Offers of Pardon upon Submission,” Franklin wrote curtly, “Reconciliation … [is] impossible on any Terms given you to propose.”
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That stopped the peace commissioners in their tracks until the first battle in the campaign for New York was fought. The British army began landing on Long Island in August. Their blow fell on August 27, just two weeks after the last grand American celebration of independence had occurred in Savannah. The Continentals were routed in a brief engagement that culminated with thousands of American soldiers breaking and running in a panic for the safety of redoubts in Brooklyn Heights. American losses were heavy—nearly 1,500 killed, wounded, or captured, including two rebel generals, John Sullivan, who had fared poorly in Canada, and William Alexander, who called himself Lord Stirling.

Given this American debacle—pretty much what many in North’s ministry and Parliament had predicted would occur on American battlefields—the Howes made one final stab at a meeting with the representatives of Congress. Lord Howe dined with Sullivan. The admiral advised his captive that he was empowered to make a just peace, adding unofficially that he could make real concessions to the colonists. Would Sullivan carry his message to Congress? Sullivan consented, and early in September he passed on to the deputies the substance of Howe’s remarks.
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Hardly a congressman believed the Howes’ were prepared to engage in serious discussions. Instead, they suspected that the real objective of the Howes was to sow deep, harmful divisions inside and outside Congress. John Adams raged that it was the Howes’ intent “to seduce us into a renunciation of our independence” by crippling American morale. Their offer to talk was “an Ambuscade, a mere insidious Manoeuvre, calculated only to decoy and deceive.”
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But Adams and his fellow deputies also feared that if Congress refused to talk, the public would blame it for “the Odium of continuing this War.” Boxed in, Congress wrangled for four days over whether to send negotiators to meet with the Howe brothers before finally deciding that it had no choice but to parley.
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Congress dispatched three of its own to meet with North’s peace commissioners: John Adams, Franklin, and Rutledge. On September 11 they met with Lord Howe—General Howe, who was about to invade Manhattan Island, was busy—in what Adams thought was a shabby house on Staten Island. Adams subsequently described how he and his colleagues “walked up to the House between Lines of Guards of Grenadiers, looking as fierce as ten furies.” Howe greeted the American envoys cordially and treated them to a dinner of ham, mutton, tongues, bread, and claret.
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Once Howe got down to business, it was readily apparent that these discussions would not be fruitful. The admiral began by saying that he had no authority to recognize American independence. It was too bad, he went on, that they could not have talked just after Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition, as it could have resulted in “an Accommodation to the Satisfaction of both Countries.” Nevertheless, it was “His Majesty’s most earnest desire to make his American Subjects happy, to cause a reform” leading to the “Redress of any real Grievances.” Taxing the colonists was of little importance to Great Britain, he continued. It was America’s “Commerce [and] her strength, her Men, that we chiefly wanted.” Howe concluded his remarks with a question: “Is there no way of treading back this Step of Independency, and opening the door to a full discussion?”

Franklin was the first to respond. The American people “could not expect Happiness now under the
Domination
of Great Britain.… [A]ll former Attachment was obliterated.… America could not return again to the Domination of Great Britain.” Adams spoke next, saying that “all the Colonies had gone compleately through a Revolution” and that American independence was the wish of “all the Colonies.” He added that he personally had no wish “to depart from the Idea of Independency.” Rutledge next told Howe that Britain’s days of utilizing America’s strength for its own ends were over, but that if London formed “an Alliance with her as an independent state,” it could reap the advantages of trade with the United States.

If those were America’s sentiments, Howe responded, “he could only lament it was not in his Power to bring about the Accommodation he wished.” When the envoys pressed Howe about the generous terms that he had mentioned to Sullivan, Howe responded that the general must have misunderstood him. Franklin had very nearly the final word. “[W]ell my Lord,” he said, “as America is to expect nothing but unconditional Submission … and Your Lordship has no Proposition to make us,” there was no point in continuing the discussion.
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Though Independence was declared in July 1776, whether the United States would survive the war and achieve independence was uncertain until the pivotal victory at Yorktown in October 1781. It was a victory made possible by the French alliance that the pro-independence forces had coveted, and had understood was possible only through a declaration of American independence. But whereas Samuel Adams and others had believed that France would ally with the United States immediately after independence was declared, the French proved to be wary. France did not commit to an alliance until early 1778, waiting to be sure that it was not backing a losing cause. The American victory at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777 convinced French leaders that the combination of French naval power and the prowess of the successful Continental army could rapidly bring London to the peace table. France nearly miscalculated. Great Britain held on for forty-two months after the alliance was signed, during which America’s economy collapsed and its military capabilities grew steadily more questionable. Had the Franco-American victory at Yorktown not occurred, the odds were considerable that the allies would have had to accept a treaty dictated by a European peace conference.
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Lord North remained the British prime minister until a few weeks after word of Yorktown reached London. In 1778, after Saratoga, he at last sought peace and reconciliation by offering bold measures of imperial reform. When North presented his peace plan to Parliament that winter, he did so in a lengthy speech that one observer characterized as the prime minister’s “confession and humiliation.” North’s turnabout was precisely what Dickinson had predicted would happen. Presciently, Dickinson had told Congress in 1775 and 1776 that after a short, brutal war, Great Britain would be willing to give the Americans everything the First Continental Congress had demanded in 1774. In the House of Commons, Charles James Fox bluntly told North that his peace proposals were essentially what the opposition had urged the government to offer rather than rushing to make war. Among other things, North proposed:

repudiation of Parliamentary taxation of the colonies;

recognition of the Continental Congress;

suspension of all American legislation enacted since 1763;

never again keeping a standing army in America during peacetime;

never again changing a colony’s charter without the colonists’ consent;

assistance to help the colonies retire their war debt; and

consideration of American representation in the House of Commons.
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North’s proposals were generous, but they came too late. America not only had decided in 1776 that it wanted to be free of Great Britain, but flushed with the great victory at Saratoga, it also knew that its long-coveted alliance with France was at hand. Furthermore, Congress was certain that the Franco-American allies could procure American independence. So the war continued until Yorktown.

It was left to Lord Germain, who, like North, had stayed on through the long war, to bring the prime minister the news of the catastrophe at Yorktown. North, Germain said later, received the tidings “as he would have taken a ball in the breast.” Pacing the floor in agitation, North exclaimed: “Oh God, it is all over!”
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He had never been more correct.

Eight who signed the Declaration of Independence did not live to see the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War in 1783. Two were dead within a year of July 4, 1776. John Morton perished of natural causes. Button Gwinnett was killed in a duel. More than half of the signers were gone by the time John Adams was sworn in as president of the United States in 1797. By the time Jefferson’s presidency ended in 1809, only sixteen were left. Adams and Jefferson, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who had not been in Congress to vote for independence, were the last of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence still living in America’s jubilee year, 1826.

One reason Elbridge Gerry had been so eager to sign the Declaration of Independence was that he anticipated doing so would further his ambition for a long, successful public career and might catapult him to lofty heights.
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But for the most part, those who had risen to the top in Congress by 1776 continued to predominate in American public life, and those who were lesser congressmen remained secondary figures. To be sure, all who sat in Congress in 1776 were already important figures in their colonies, and most continued to play substantive roles in their states following independence.