Patriots (30 page)

Joseph Galloway, who was also from Pennsylvania, was dubious about the ulterior aims of the Bostonians. He sounded them out over dinner and reported his impressions to the governor of New Jersey, William Franklin. William was the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, and he had received his post at the age of twenty-seven, before his father’s influence at court had dropped so precipitously. As governor, William seemed to favor the loyalists. Now from Galloway he heard that while the Boston delegates might appear moderate, they were throwing out hints that suggested otherwise.

The author of the “Pennsylvania Farmer” letters, John Dickinson, called on the Bostonians and complained of his gout. He would not be joining the Congress just yet. Dickinson first seemed a shadow to John Adams, as pale as ashes, but, looking more closely, Adams decided that Dickinson would last many more years. Thomas Lynch, Jr., of South Carolina invited the Massachusetts party to dine at his lodgings with his wife and daughter, and although the heat was oppressive the afternoon was a great success.

At one point, Lynch praised a brief speech that Colonel George Washington had made before the Virginia convention. John Adams asked, “Who is Colonel Washington and what was his speech?”

Lynch explained that Washington had become famous during the French and Indian War and had fought in the battle at which General Braddock fell. As for his speech, the Virginians had been arguing over what to do if the Bostonians began to fight the British. As the arguments raged, Washington had risen to say, “I will raise a thousand men, subsist them at my own expense and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston.” It was the most eloquent speech that Lynch had ever heard.

That sort of anecdote—touched up or even fabricated as Lynch’s story had been—was lending a celebrity to certain delegates even before the first session. And yet, John Adams had been brooding for weeks over how few outstanding leaders the colonies seemed likely to produce.
“We have not men fit for the times,” he complained to his diary. “We are deficient in genius, in education, in travel, in fortune—in everything.” All the same, Peyton Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s cousin, was being admired for the way he could be open and cordial. Patrick
Henry’s reputation as a modern Demosthenes had preceded him. And when a man seemed to show special strength and persistence in the cause—Gadsden of South Carolina or Charles Thomson of Philadelphia—he was likely to be introduced as the Samuel Adams of his colony.

By September 1, 1774, not enough members had arrived in Philadelphia, and the opening was held over until the following Monday. As they waited,
Silas Deane wrote home to ask his wife to assure their friends that the delegates were in high spirits, sobered only when they remembered that millions of eyes—and all of posterity—were watching their conduct.

—

When Monday came, the delegates first assembled at their informal headquarters, the City Tavern. As speaker of the Pennsylvania House, Joseph Galloway had offered the House chamber to the Congress and was quite insistent that it meet there. But within his own delegation Galloway was suspected of being too moderate, and others opposed his suggestion and led the delegates instead to Carpenters’ Hall. There they found a white-paneled room, not large but beautifully proportioned, together with a library and a
long hall where delegates might stroll and caucus, all overlooking a quiet square. In the
first vote of the Continental Congress, a great majority decided to make the tradesmen’s building their home.

Here in Philadelphia, the political labels of the past decade suddenly seemed inadequate and even misleading. Presumably all of the delegates were Whigs and patriots. Why else would they be here? But men like Galloway were clearly less impassioned than Patrick Henry or the two Adamses. Such tepid delegates sounded like “halfway patriots” or conservatives. The new division didn’t show up in the selection of a chairman, since no one opposed the nomination of Peyton Randolph. He had presided over the Virginia Burgesses, and here the delegates decided to call him their president.

After having lost on where the Congress should meet, the conservatives suffered a second setback when it was time to choose a secretary.

During the selection of delegates for Pennsylvania, Charles Thomson’s reputation as his colony’s Samuel Adams had ruined his chances. A cheerful businessman in his midforties, Thomson struck some hesitant men as too popular among the poor and ill-educated, and he had used debating tricks that even Samuel Adams might have questioned. After the Port Act, Thomson had been speaking on behalf of Boston when he was drowned out by shouts from the conservatives. He had retaliated by seeming to faint and being carried from the hall. But just before the Congress was due to meet in Philadelphia, Thomson, a widower, had married John Dickinson’s wealthy cousin. Even that connection hadn’t reassured the halfway patriots, and they had passed him over as a delegate. Now his friends rallied and got Thomson elected as the Congress’s secretary, and he was called back from his honeymoon to take up his duties.

Although twenty-two of the fifty-six delegates were lawyers, there hadn’t yet been any of the quibbling that John Adams considered the bane of his profession. One crucial question to resolve, however, did not turn on personalities, and the Congress had to confront it early. Should each of the twelve colonies—Georgia had declined to send delegates—have one vote or should votes be allotted to colonies on the basis of their population or wealth?

The delegates expected the governor of Rhode Island to argue that each colony, whatever its size, was taking the same risk in opposing
Britain and each should have the same vote. John Jay of New York would probably counter that a colony with twice the population of many others shouldn’t have its vote cut in half. But a rancorous debate might end the Congress before it began, and no one wanted to be the first to speak. Finally a delegate did arise, and Charles Thomson felt sorry for him. He was probably a Presbyterian minister, dressed in drab gray with an unpowdered and unfashionable wig, and clearly out of his depth.

“We are here met in a time of great
difficulty and distress,” the man began.

Delegates were only starting to recognize one another, and they were asking their neighbors, “Who is speaking?” It was Patrick Henry of Virginia. Henry was arguing that it would be a great injustice for a small colony to have the same weight as a large one. He was in the middle of his speech when the first day of the Continental Congress came to an end.

The next day, Henry resumed his argument. Overnight, John Adams had also been fretting that five small colonies, each with one hundred thousand people, might outvote four colonies with five hundred thousand each. On the other hand, how could they possibly get accurate figures about either population or a colony’s volume of trade on such short notice? Charles Thomson had decided that as secretary he should record only the final vote, not the discussion that led up to it. He simply listened as Patrick Henry spoke. But writing was as natural as breathing for John Adams, who set down Henry’s flowing argument in a burst of notes:

“Government is dissolved. Fleets and armies and the present state of things show that Government is dissolved. Where are your landmarks? Your boundaries of colonies? We are in a state of nature, sir.”

Henry urged that ten thousand Virginians must outweigh a thousand residents in another colony. But if he was overruled, he said, he was willing to submit to the majority. Mostly, he wanted the delegates to appreciate their new circumstances. “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more.

“I am
not a Virginian but an American.”

Henry’s declaration was appealing and visionary, but it didn’t carry the day. Two fellow delegates from Virginia, Richard Henry Lee and Richard Bland, made the same point that had worried John
Adams: the delegates lacked the data to weight the votes. The Congress, deciding that this first decision would not be irrevocably binding, agreed to give each colony one vote. The first debate had reminded the delegates of the staying power of some speakers, and they also voted that from then on
no man could speak twice on the same subject without express permission.

The next obstacle they faced was religious and potentially even more divisive. On Monday, Thomas Cushing had moved that each session open with a prayer. Jay of New York and Rutledge of South Carolina had opposed the idea. The delegates came from so many faiths—Episcopalians, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Quakers—that there was no way they could all worship together.

Samuel Adams was known to be as pious as any man in the hall and more strict, and he impressed the delegates by announcing that he was no bigot, that he could hear a prayer from any virtuous gentleman so long as he was also a friend to his country. He himself was a stranger in Philadelphia, but he had heard that Mr. Duché was such a man. Adams moved that he read prayers to the Congress the next morning.

When the session ended, Peyton Randolph went to see Jacob Duché, the assistant rector at an Episcopal church. The clergyman said that if his health permitted he would be there. Overnight, reports reached Philadelphia that General Gage had bombarded Boston and several people had been killed. When the Reverend Duché arrived the next morning, he read the Thirty-fifth Psalm, “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me . . .” and the delegates felt they were hearing a message from Heaven. Duché then prayed extemporaneously for ten minutes on behalf of Boston. Even Quakers wept, and Congregationalists declared that they had never heard better preaching.

On Wednesday the delegates learned that Boston had not been shelled. General Gage had merely sent troops to the armory at Cambridge to seize the gunpowder stored there. That action was provocative, but no blood had been spilled, and the Congress could settle down to its business.

A committee had been formed to spell out the grievances with Britain and suggestions for resolving them. Nothing that was said was new to John Adams. It was the old debate over natural rights, constitutional rights, laws at the pleasure of a king or by the power
of an elected Parliament. For years, every patriot in Boston had read and heard them. But as Adams took down each argument, he was reassured about the quality of the delegates. They were better than he had first thought. Richard Lee wanted to rest their case on its broadest defense—natural law. Joseph Galloway said he had looked for laws in nature and had never found any there. “Power,” said Galloway, “results from the real property of the society.” John Adams couldn’t endorse that argument, and yet Galloway was buttressing it with allusions to Greece and Rome and Macedonia. Writing at night to his wife in Braintree, Adams praised the delegates in Philadelphia as the greatest men upon the continent. They made him blush, he said, for the sordid, venal herd of public officials in Massachusetts.

The Congress was now meeting in committees rather than in general session. Delegates worked from nine each morning until three in the afternoon, adjourned for a lavish dinner at four and sat again until six or seven, drinking claret or burgundy and going over the day’s debates one last time. John Adams was eating and drinking as never before—jellies, sweetmeats, trifles, curds and creams, whipped sillabubs, Parmesan cheese, almonds and raisins, and washed down with strong punch and rich red wines. He did vow, however, that he would drink only beer and porter in Philadelphia. New Englanders found the local cider far inferior to what they enjoyed at home.

Amid the good living, the business of the Congress was inching forward. Late in September, Richard Lee made a motion for the nonimportation of goods from England. Earlier, John Adams had been called upon to defend the conduct of John Hancock and other Boston merchants during the last agreement. This time, the boycott must be more sweeping. A first proposal suggested that no goods be imported after December 1, and no goods exported either. But Virginia had tobacco inventories to clear, and the delegates were determined to preserve a united front. They agreed that the ban on exports should not go into effect for one year.

Samuel Adams knew the suspicions that the Massachusetts delegation aroused, and so far he had let Christopher Gadsden, Richard Lee and the other Southerners take the lead while he consulted with them from the shadows. Then, just as adjournment seemed possible, the halfway patriots offered a resolution that
would unravel the past month’s work. Joseph Galloway objected to the nonimportation agreements and put forward his own plan. Galloway assured the delegates that he was as much a friend of liberty as existed, but “we must come upon terms with Great Britain.” Not exporting to England meant throwing tens of thousands of people out of work. His proposal called instead for an American Grand Council that would represent every province. Britain’s Parliament would validate its statutes, and the king would appoint its leader—Galloway called him a Resident General.

Samuel Adams and his allies had not come three hundred miles to doom America to second-class citizenship. But James Duane of New York seconded Galloway’s motion and so did John Jay. Richard Henry Lee protested that he couldn’t possibly agree to such a plan without consulting his constituents. Patrick Henry said the Congress would be saving the people from a corrupt House of Commons only to turn them over to an American legislature that Britain was sure to bribe. By one vote, however, the colonies agreed to go on debating
Galloway’s plan, and Charles Thomson entered the proposal in his minutes.

Samuel Adams was no longer a stranger in Philadelphia, and the opposition he organized to Galloway was different from Richard Henry Lee’s and Patrick Henry’s. The crowds around Carpenters’ Hall soon heard that a faction led by Joseph Galloway was bent on selling out their liberties. Galloway headed a powerful Quaker bloc, and yet he began to fear being attacked by a mob in his own home precincts. As the crowd clamored, Adams dined with men whose support he needed. After one pleasant session, Colonel George Washington wrote home that he had consulted with the New England delegates and was convinced that they weren’t aiming for independence.