Conceived in Liberty (231 page)

After New England, the next region where independence came to the fore was the south. Paradoxically, the first virtual authorization came from Georgia, once the most laggard of all the colonies. Reacting to Lexington and Concord against its former indifference, Georgia had established a revolutionary provincial congress and a subordinate council of safety. Urged by the Continental Congress in November to step up military resistance to royal arms, the merchants and artisans of Savannah led the Georgia rebels to establish more formal government by the end of January 1776. The government fulfilled the crucial radical requirements: a unicameral elected legislature to which the executive Council of Safety, the courts, and the militia were strictly subordinate, and the legislature was selected by universal taxpayer suffrage. The president of the Council of Safety, in turn, was strictly subordinate to the council and could not act without its consent. The stalwart militant Archibald Bullock was chosen for this position, and five radicals were soon selected as delegates to the Continental Congress. In April, the Georgia rebels adopted a temporary constitution formalizing this regime, and on April 5 the provincial congress authorized its delegates to vote in whatever way they wished on independence. Thus, Georgia was the first colony to explicitly authorize its delegates to vote for independence, and considering the composition of its delegation, this itself was tantamount to an affirmative vote. By April there were no worries about Georgia’s readiness for independence.

Georgia, however, was very small and one of the least significant colonies. Far more important was North Carolina. As was the case in most of the other provinces in 1775, North Carolina was run by a spontaneous network of county committees capped by a provincial congress. Several factors served to embolden North Carolina opinion in the spring of 1776. One was the rebel triumph of the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, where the Tories of the province were crushed. Another was the threat of invasion by Gen. Sir Henry Clinton’s fleet off Cape Fear and the inspiration provided by Gen. Charles Lee. Lee’s assumption of an independent southern command that March had a vital military as well as political impact; this scourge of the Tories was as well versed and radical in political warfare as he was in military matters. His arrest of Maryland’s royal governor, the popular Robert Eden, galvanized the struggle; and
this was followed by his sending an aide, Gen. Robert Howe, to a convention of North Carolina radicals meeting in Halifax in early April. Chaired by the ordinarily cautious and conservative Samuel Johnston, the political leader of the colony, and influenced by General Howe, the convention took a noteworthy and climactic step: sending positive instructions on April 12 to its congressional delegation to vote for independence and for any necessary foreign alliances. Here was the first frank instruction for independence in America, albeit the instruction was to
concur
in independence rather than take the initiative. Lee warmly congratulated North Carolina on this promising step.

While the North Carolina instruction for independence passed without difficulty, the April convention for writing a constitution rent the province in bitter ideological conflict. The first local resolution for independence had been made as early as May 31, 1775, in Mecklenburg County in the far western frontier of North Carolina. The Mecklenburg Resolution had declared all British laws and commissions as well as the royal government of the province to be null and void and coupled this early call for independence with the establishment of a county-wide court as the local government elected by universal manhood suffrage. The following August, Mecklenburg County spelled out its comprehensive domestic radicalism in its instructions to its representatives at the provincial congress. They called for suffrage by all free men, the abolition of property qualifications for members of the assembly, and the correction of apportionment in the assembly in accordance with population. Plural officeholding was to be prohibited and local officials elected by the people, and there was to be no oligarchical veto over the decisions of the elected legislature. True to its democratic-liberal position, the county urged disestablishment of the Anglican Church, but they were able to go only so far in their libertarianism, and “pagan or papal” religions were decried as “false” and could not be tolerated in the province.

At the constitutional convention in April 1776, the proindependence forces split sharply on the issue of domestic democracy versus conservatism. A furious struggle ensued over bicameralism, popular election of local judges, and suffrage restrictions, with Samuel Johnston, his brother-in-law James Iredell, and William Hooper leading the conservative forces. A deadlock between the two factions forced postponement of the attempt to write a constitution for North Carolina.

The road to independence was not nearly so smooth in the neighboring colony of South Carolina. Throughout 1775, this province had a formidable bloc of conservatives deeply opposed to any hint of independence. (Even the provincial council of safety, dominated by conservatives, rejected the plea of the radicals to fortify Charleston Harbor against the expected British attack that finally came in June 1776.) In early November,
the Continental Congress suggested that South Carolina establish a new government for the duration of the conflict, a suggestion that it had also made to New Hampshire. At the February meeting of the South Carolina Provincial Congress, the conservatives and radicals battled furiously; the right wing, led by the influential planter Rawlins Lowndes, even objected to
any
new government as a possible step toward independence. Battling for a formal government for that very reason were William Henry Drayton and the great veteran radical leader Christopher Gadsden, who characteristically called for independence publicly. The new government was finally adopted at the end of March, spurred by news of the hard-line British Proclamation of Rebellion and the Prohibitory Act. Even then, the South Carolinians took pains to dissociate this step from independence, and the irrepressible Gadsden was rebuked by the bulk of the provincial congress when he read passages from
Common Sense
to the assemblage.

The South Carolina constitution of March 1776, was, unsurprisingly, a highly conservative instrument. The representative assembly was to choose an upper house, and both houses would in turn select a third body, the Privy Council, to exert administrative and judicial authority in place of the old Royal Council. Both houses would also choose a president, who would have veto power over the legislature. Before the Revolution, South Carolina had had perhaps the most badly apportioned representation in the colonies: three-quarters of the white population of the province, living in the back country, were unrepresented in the assembly. The new constitution allowed the back country 40 representatives out of 184, but while a considerable improvement, this representation was still weighted outrageously on behalf of the lowland areas. This constitution was severely criticized by the democratic forces for its hasty adoption without explicit approval by the people, for the presidential veto which smacked strongly of the royal prerogative, and for the oligarchic upper house.

The outlook for independence in South Carolina was not bright, but the radical actions of the Continental Congress, the news of the victory at Boston, and the bold move of North Carolina for independence strongly influenced the province. As chief justice of the new government, William Henry Drayton selected a new judicial structure free of royal authority and, at the end of April, he took it upon himself in a charge to a Charleston grand jury to proclaim South Carolina’s independence of Great Britain. He declared that the colony was pursuing its right to revolution against a tyrannical government. Treating the temporary constitution of South Carolina as an act of permanent separation, he defended it as a reflection of the laws of “nature and reason.” South Carolina’s president, John Rutledge, who had shifted to the side of independence along with other monderate conservatives, officially sent Drayton’s printed statement to the
Continental Congress. This act was properly received as tantamount to a call for independence by the province itself.

The southern accession to the cause of independence meant little, of course, without the adherence of Virginia, the preeminent province of the South. This province, despite its leadership in the resistance movement to Great Britain, would not be an easy mark. While it had been eager to resist Great Britain and had thrown itself into battle against Lord Dunmore’s raids, its revolutionary bodies were in the hands of thoroughgoing conservative oligarchs who balked strongly at independence, especially Edmund Pendleton, president of the Virginia Committee of Safety, and Robert Carter Nicholas, the committee’s treasurer.

Patrick Henry, leader of the radical forces, was repeatedly humiliated by the Committee of Safety in his post as commander-in-chief of the Virginia militia, and, embittered, he temporarily retired to private life at the end of February 1776. One of the reasons for this treatment of Henry was his belief in an individualistic and democratic army; the conservative Committee of Safety realized in dismay that he “did not seem too conscious of the importance of strict discipline in the army, but regarded his soldiers as so many gentlemen who had met to defend their country, and exacted from them little more than the courtesy that was proper among equals.”
*

The attitude of the Virginia conservatives toward independence may be gauged by their vituperative reaction to
Common Sense.
The eminent planter Landon Carter was at no loss for words to vent his spleen: it was “dangerous,” “absurd,” “scandalous,” “rascally,” “nonsensical,” and “brutish.” Like so many archconservatives since, he raised a “social” argument against Paine’s individualism. Realizing that Paine grounded his doctrine on an individualistic theory of natural law, he wrote: “This man writes for independency, and is under the necessity of stating an independence in man at his creation, when it is evident he must be a social being....”

In early 1776, Pendleton, Nicholas, and the conservative forces of Virginia managed to send as a delegate to the Continental Congress the extremely wealthy planter and merchant, Carter Braxton, of the Carter family, who was the Virginia associate in Robert Morris’ rapidly burgeoning financial empire. Braxton’s mission was to block independence, and this he set out to achieve with great diligence.

During April, however, sentiment in Virginia veered ever more toward independence: the news of the victory at Boston, the bold moves of the
Continental Congress, and the decisions for independence by the rest of the south all played their part. Added to this were pressures for independence by Richard Henry Lee and by George Washington through his brother John, the fact of Washington’s being a Virginian being highly important in attracting the patriotism of fellow Virginians. Finally, at the end of March, Charles Lee took up his post at Williamsburg as head of the Southern Military Department and added his determined and fiery personality to the pressure upon the Virginians. Indeed, Lee stayed at Williamsburg largely to rouse the inhabitants and press for independence. His presence was especially needed for the crucial April elections for the critical meeting of the Provincial Convention starting on May 6, elections that hinged on the issue of independence. So overwhelming was the sentiment of the new convention for independence that, on May 15, Virginia unanimously instructed its delegates to urge the Continental Congress to “declare the United Colonies free and independent states, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain.” Here, significantly, was not simply an agreement, as in most of the other provinces, to concur in any congressional resolution for independence; here was an instruction for actually proposing the final break with Great Britain. Congress was also urged to form whatever foreign alliances or confederation of the erstwhile colonies that might be necessary. The conservatives of the convention bent easily with the wind and endorsed the resolution.

Having opted for independence, the Virginians believed they had to settle on a constitution for the province, and upon its nature furious battles ensued. The internal struggle was not, however, as it was in such provinces as Massachusetts, between Paine-type democrats on the Left and Adams-like adherents to mixed government on the Right. So conservative were all the leaders of Virginia that the debate shifted sharply rightward. The Virginia Left held views similar to the Massachusetts Right. Of its leaders, Patrick Henry hailed
Thoughts on Government
as fully expressing his own views, and Thomas Jefferson’s doctrines were quite similar. Other leaders of the Virginia moderates were Richard Henry Lee and the eminent lawyer George Mason.

Bitterly opposing these moderate forces were the ultraconservatives, headed by Pendleton, Nicholas, and their chief theoretician, Carter Braxton. Braxton quickly published an
Address to the Convention of... Virginia,
specifically designed as a reactionary rebuttal to Adams’
Thoughts on Government.
The pamphlet brusquely hailed the current British constitution as ideal and urged on Virginia a similar government. Braxton insisted that the popularly elected assembly choose a governor and members of an upper house of the legislature, both of these to hold their positions for life, “that they might possess all the weight, stability, and dignity due to the
importance of their office.” In this way, both the governor and the upper house would be totally independent of the people and hence avoid the evils, the “tumult and riot,” of democracy. Braxton was here simply taking the concept of Adams, Jefferson, and Mason of some independent governing bodies, and pushing it to its logical conclusion: life terms for everyone outside the lower house. The Virginia moderates, however, did not see the connection between Braxton’s plan and theirs, and they dismissed his pamphlet as “silly” and “contemptible.”

Patrick Henry, leading the moderates of the committee appointed to draft a Virginia constitution, despaired for a time of triumphing over the “great bias to aristocracy” among “most of our opulent families.” When he poured out his worries to his friend John Adams, Adams answered with an eloquent and thundering denunciation of Virginia’s ultraconservative and highly aristocratic “nabobs”: