Independence

I N D E P E N D E N C E

THE STRUGGLE TO
SET AMERICA FREE

J O H N  F E R L I N G

To Dee Donnelly and Michelle Kuhlman

Who mean more to me than they will ever know

PREFACE

Nearly all of us at times fall into the trap of looking back on history's pivotal events as inevitable. Were not the differences between the North and South destined to end in the American Civil War? Surely, Hitler's coming to power was unavoidable. Was not the collapse of the Soviet Union inescapable?

Well, perhaps not. Great events in history, and their outcomes, are seldom bound to happen. They hinge on happenstance, on complex twists and turns, and on choices made or unmade. Make one choice and history goes in one direction. Don't make that choice and events may well veer in another direction.

But once the end of the story is known, there is always a temptation to read history backward. Knowing how things turned out makes it easy to assume that the ending was foreordained.

That may be especially true for many Americans with regard to the declaring of independence in 1776. In recent years popular culture—and not a few writers—has so lionized America's Founding Fathers that many may see them as leaders whose indomitable will set them on an inexorable course toward independence.

History is more complicated. It seems certain that most Americans did not favor independence when what we now know as the War of Independence broke out in April 1775. Even after the war had raged for several months, many Americans—again, probably most—still did not want American independence. At the beginning of 1776 a majority of those who served in the Continental Congress preferred reconciliation with the mother country to American independence. Had the Continental Congress voted on independence in January or February 1776, no more than five of the thirteen colonies would likely have favored a final break with Great Britain.

This is a book about the evolution of the idea of American independence and about the events and decisions that ultimately led Congress, with the backing of most colonists, to set America free of the British Empire. The book's subtitle contains the word “struggle,” and in fact those who favored severing all ties with Great Britain faced a long, difficult battle before, at last, they succeeded in declaring independence. Eleven years elapsed between Britain's first attempt to tax the colonists and the Declaration of Independence. What we today call the War of Independence, or the Revolutionary War, had gone on for fifteen months before the Continental Congress declared independence. For more than a year the colonists fought, and died, not for American independence, but to be reunited with Great Britain on America's terms.

A struggle over Great Britain's policy toward the colonies was played out in London as well. Battles were fought in Parliament and within the ministry at every turn, from the passage of the first American tax in 1765 to the decision a decade later to use force rather than to engage in peace negotiations with the Americans. Powerful and articulate members of Parliament always opposed the American policies of their government, fearing that additional provocations would only push the colonists toward independence. Some proposed solutions to the Anglo-American crisis that, if adopted, might have stanched the drift to American independence.

This book is about the struggle in America over how best to resist British actions and secure American interests, and to secure the prevailing interest of individual colonies. It is also about the battles in London over how best to deal with, and respond to, the recalcitrant American colonists. It is a story filled with irony, for in the end the Americans opted for an independence that most of them had wished to avert, while Britain's leaders were confronted with a declaration of American independence that they had sought to prevent, first by peaceful means, later through strident measures.

The choices that were made on both sides were made by individuals, and this book evaluates the key players, important members of the Continental Congress as well as British ministers and their principal adversaries in Parliament. Public officials in that day were not unlike today's officials. Some who held positions of authority were high-minded and sought what they thought was best for the nation. Some were visionaries. Some were inspired by deeply held philosophical convictions. Some were vengeful. Some acted on behalf of narrow provincial interests or sought to protect the entrenched elite. Some were motivated by the hope of enhancing their careers or reputations. Some sought economic gain. Many were driven by a combination of these motives. And no one had a crystal ball. No one could say unequivocally what the long-term results would be if the choice he advocated was adopted.

On the American side, the members of Congress remained deeply divided over the best course to pursue all the way down to July 1776. Some congressmen desperately sought to avoid war and revolution, some held intransigently to the hope of reconciliation, some reluctantly accepted independence, and some surreptitiously yearned for independence years before it was declared. This is the story of able and ambitious politicians—including America's Founders—scrambling to land on their feet; of members of Congress walking a political tightrope between the conflicting interests of New England, the mid-Atlantic colonies, and the South; of men who were daring and men who were timid; of men who were tied to the past and men who dreamed of what might be a glorious future.

Britain's ministers and those in Parliament who opposed them simultaneously groped for the means of saving Great Britain's North American empire. It is a spellbinding tale of a great modern nation blundering into a disaster as its leaders become trapped by their earliest decisions, making them captives in a descent toward tragedy. How the hard and unbending British leaders steered their nation toward an epic disaster provides lessons for politicians in any time period. Britain's rulers coped with the welter of interests in a great modern state. At the same time, they sought to avoid the appearance of weakness. Their story, it seems now, is that of shortsighted leaders on a straightforward path to catastrophe.

Above all, this is a story that could have ended differently. A declaration of American independence, at least in 1776, might never have occurred. There were ways that the imperial crisis might have been resolved, and this book tells the story of the options and alternatives that existed.

But mostly it is a human story. Some forty years after 1776, Thomas Jefferson tried to set the record straight. He was troubled that subsequent generations had come to credit the Founding Fathers with “a wisdom more than human” and to view their achievements with “sanctimonious reverence.”
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With regard to independence, Jefferson knew that the story of what had transpired between the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776 was far more complex. He knew that the struggle to break America's colonial shackles had been a very human story filled with shards of weakness, opportunism, accidents, deceit, fortuity, enmity, decisions wise and misguided, exemplary leadership, and ultimately heroic boldness.

John Adams would have agreed with Jefferson. He, too, knew how difficult the struggle had been to bring Congress to declare independence, and not long after the battle had been won, he declared: “Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the [Revolutionary] Generation, to preserve your Freedom.”
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The leaders on both sides were ordinary mortals who happened to be confronted with extraordinary challenges. This is the story of their response to the uncommon challenges they faced. It is not a story filled with heroes and villains so much as it a history of human beings of assorted virtues, beliefs, motives, and talents who could not see the future with the clarity with which we can see the past.

This is not a history of the American Revolution. While it looks at the Anglo-American crisis from its inception down to the Declaration of Independence, the book largely examines the forty-month period between the Boston Tea Party, in December 1773, and Congress's vote for independence, in July 1776. Its objective is to understand the major players on both sides, what drove them, the choices they faced, their successes and failures, and, above all, why the American Congress moved steadily—seemingly inexorably—toward a final break with Great Britain.

Debts accumulate in the course of writing any book. I am particularly grateful to Matt deLesdernier and James Sefcik for reading the manuscript, pointing out errors, and offering guidance. Four good friends—Edith Gelles, Michael deNie, Keith Pacholl, and Arthur Lefkowitz—answered many questions that I posed. Lorene Flanders graciously found places for me to work in a library that was undergoing a major renovation during much of the time that I was writing the book. Angela Mehaffey and her staff in the Interlibrary Loan Office of the Irvine Sullivan Ingram Library at the University of West Georgia cordially met my rapacious requests for books and articles. Elmira Eidson helped me out of numerous scrapes with my computer and word processing program. Nathaniel Knaebel was an understanding, easy-to-work-with production editor. No author ever had a better copyeditor than Maureen Klier.

Geri Thoma was crucial in the realization of my dream to write the book. Peter Beatty helped in many ways to bring the book to completion, all the while listening to my tales of woe about the Pittsburgh Pirates. This is my sixth book with Peter Ginna, a masterful editor who unfailingly provides encouragement, criticism, and a storehouse of wonderful ideas.

As always, Carol, my wife, encouraged and supported my work, and she joined with me in our annual cookout to celebrate Independence Day on July 2 (yes, July 2—see chapters thirteen and fourteen).

November 12, 2010