Independence (17 page)

With Galloway's proposal shelved, the pace of Congress quickened. During the next three weeks, the delegates rapidly moved through a breathtaking series of substantive decisions. Furthermore, while there were heated moments, the earlier rancor subsided considerably. Indeed, the realization that Galloway's plan had been tabled, not voted down, and that it would eventually come up for a final vote, may have made the hard-liners more amenable to joining hands with their moderate colleagues.

Another reality also haunted the more radical New Englanders. It was readily apparent, as John Adams noted, not only that “absolute Independency” was an idea “which Startles People here” but also that the feeling was so widespread that should Massachusetts provoke “a Rupture with the [British] Troops all is lost.” In other words, if Yankee hotheads were thought to have started a war, American unity would be shattered. Every mid-Atlantic colony, and perhaps others as well, would abandon New England. Similarly, should Massachusetts push for steps that many congressmen believed were certain to lead to war, that too would likely destroy American unity. Most members of Congress were “fixed against Hostilities” unless the British fired the first shot, Adams continued. Even then, many anguished that should war come, it “would light up … the whole Continent” with flames “which might rage for twenty year, and End, in the Subduction of America, as likely as in her Liberation.”
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In the more conciliatory—even genial—mood that prevailed by early October, Congress voted to prohibit all exports to Great Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies, though it agreed that non-exportation must be delayed for one year, until September 1, 1775. Congress also agreed to non-consumption, under which British goods already ordered or acquired by American merchants could be sold for five more months, until March 1. A few days later Congress created the Continental Association, the mechanism for enforcing the trade embargo. Under its provisions, every city, town, and county in the colonies was to create a committee to assure adherence to the boycott. The committees were to be elected by “those who are qualified to vote for representatives” in the provincial assembly. Congress also vowed to boycott trade with any colony that refused to adhere to the Association.
69

While the bargaining over the boycott played out, Congress dealt with the Declaration of Colonial Rights and Grievances brought in by the Grand Committee a few days prior to Galloway's presentation. Congress tinkered with the document, adding here, subtracting there. It finally agreed on a statement in mid-October. Much of the document repeated, sometimes verbatim, the declarations adopted by various colonies going back to the Virginia Resolves nine years earlier. It denied that Parliament could legislate for America “in all cases of taxation and internal polity,” and it specifically denounced Admiralty Courts, the Intolerable Acts, the deployment of the British army in America in peacetime, and the Quebec Act, which it disingenuously assailed not as an economic grievance but as having established “the Roman Catholic religion in … Quebec.” But while it denied much of Parliament's power over America, the Declaration was leavened with the statement that the colonists from “necessity … and a regard to the mutual interests of both countries … cheerfully consent” to Parliament's “regulation of our external commerce.”
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The question of whether Parliament could regulate American trade was the stumbling block that had tied up the Grand Committee for three long weeks. The mid-Atlantic colonies insisted on Parliament's regulatory power—as Dickinson had asserted years before—because they had enjoyed nearly uninterrupted profits through imperial commerce, deriving credit from London's lending houses, protection on the high seas from the Royal Navy, reduced overhead costs through marine insurance available in the metropolis, and invaluable assistance provided in foreign ports by British diplomats. New England had not wanted to recognize any powers of Parliament, but it relented yet again, and John Adams, who took his marching orders from Samuel Adams at the First Congress, wrote the section on commerce that made possible the passage of the Declaration of Rights.
71

If the hard-liners had once again bowed to the moderates, one further matter came before Congress on which most from New England and Virginia were unwilling to yield. Both Massachusetts and Virginia wanted Congress to order military preparations, and Lee brought it up early in October. In as much as a huge British army was in America, Lee said, the colonies must be ready to defend themselves. Therefore, each colony should raise a militia, and Congress should furnish arms and ammunition to these citizen soldiers. Lee's motion touched off the last angry debate in this Congress. South Carolina's John Rutledge denounced the motion as both beyond the scope of why Congress had been called to meet and a “Declaration of Warr.” Lee's colleague from Virginia, Benjamin Harrison, spoke against it as well, contending that it would inflame passions, whereas “Our Business is to reconcile.” After several delegates from the middle colonies had taken a similar stance, Patrick Henry, a hot mass of feelings, jumped in with the most candid remarks offered during the roiling debate: If the trade boycott failed to secure redress, a resort to arms would be the only course left to America. In fact, there was a strong likelihood that the British army might attack even before the embargo had an opportunity to work. Given the gloomy road ahead, Henry emphasized that military preparedness was essential. “Arms are Necessary, & … Necessary Now.”
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(Half a century later, John Adams remarked that of all the delegates to the First Continental Congress, Henry best understood “the Precipice or rather the Pinnacle on which he stood, and had candour and courage enough to acknowledge it.”)
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As military preparedness hung in the balance, Paul Revere arrived in Philadelphia after yet another long ride. This time he brought word that General Gage had ordered the construction of military fortifications in Boston. Revere reported that many feared that Gage was taking this step in preparation for unleashing his army, while others worried that the ramparts built by the soldiers would sever all communication and trade between Boston and the hinterland. This crisis brought Samuel Adams from the shadows. Speaking at last, Adams proposed that Congress inform Gage that it considered his action to be a provocation that threatened “all America [with] the Horrors of a civil War” that would open a “Wound which would never be heald.” Both Lee's call for arming the provincial militias and Adams's advocacy of a harsh response to Gage were too drastic for Congress. Instead, with Lee raging privately that the timorous “majority had not the spirit” to prepare for war, Congress adopted a temperate response to Gage. Claiming that it was pursuing “every dutiful and peaceful measure to procure … reconciliation,” Congress appealed to Gage to do nothing that would take on “so hostile an appearance” that it might “irritate & force a free people … into hostilities.” Congress further temporized by merely requesting the colonies to ready their militia; it took no steps to provision the militiamen. Before adjourning, however, Congress—without spelling out the details of what it had in mind—resolved to support Massachusetts militarily in the event that it was attacked.
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In the waning days of Congress, a move was made to bring Galloway's compromise scheme up for a vote. But Congress wanted no more of it. Galloway's plan was not just left on the table; all record of its existence was expunged from Congress's published journal.
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The congressmen had been away from home—and in about a third of the cases, away from their legal practices—for upwards of two months. They were eager to wrap things up, especially as they knew that the substantive business of this Congress was now complete. When the committees charged with preparing an address to the king and separate addresses to the people of Britain, Quebec, and America reported in October, the delegates approved the drafts rapidly and with few meaningful changes, though the congressional editing was not devoid of niggling.

The address to the king was couched in humble tones. “[Y]our majesty's faithful subjects … beg leave to lay our grievances before the throne,” it began. After reciting the grievances, it prayed that “Your royal indignation … will rather fall on those designing and dangerous men” responsible for attempting to sunder the liberties that the colonists had always enjoyed “under the auspices of your royal ancestors.” It concluded with the statement, “We ask but for peace, liberty, and safety. We wish not [to] … solicit any new right.” And it implored the monarch to use his “royal authority and interposition … for our relief.” It was signed by each member of Congress.
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What in the long run was most memorable about the address to the monarch was that it had been drafted by John Dickinson. As was its custom, Pennsylvania conducted its annual elections early in October. The results were striking. In district after district, the Assembly Party went down to defeat. Once the assembly met, it deposed Joseph Galloway as speaker and elected Dickinson to Congress. Dickinson took his seat on October 17, nine days before Congress adjourned and just in time to be given this one important assignment. The meaning of what had occurred in Pennsylvania was lost on no one. The election outcome was “a most compleat and decisive Victory in favour of the American Cause,” declared John Adams. He added that it would “change the Balance” in the next Congress, which the delegates voted to open on May 10, 1775, unless the imperial crisis had been resolved in the interim.
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“This day the Congress dissolved,” a delegate noted in his diary on October 26. Fifty-two days after its initial session, the First Continental Congress was at an end. Defeated in his bid for a compromise settlement, Galloway went home to nearby Trevose. Suffused with despair, he bristled that those of “Violent Temper” had won out, the “Spirit of American Independency breathing throughout all of them.” He was certain that their victory made war unavoidable. Samuel Adams must have been buoyant as he returned home from Philadelphia. Nearly all that he had dared to hope for from a continental congress had been realized. But whereas Galloway presumed that war would result because he had failed, Adams appears to have believed that hostilities would occur because he had succeeded. Already, Samuel Adams was writing that the colonists must “provide themselves without Delay with Arms & Ammunition [and] get well instructed in the military Art” so that “they may be ready in Case they are called to defend themselves against the violent Attacks of Despotism.”
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CHAPTER 4

“I
T
I
S A
B
ILL OF
W
AR.
I
T
D
RAWS THE
S
WORD
”

L
ORD
D
ARTMOUTH,
G
EORGE
W
ASHINGTON,
H
OSTILITIES

SOME DELEGATES LEFT PHILADELPHIA EARLY,
but Colonel Washington and Richard Henry Lee stayed to the end, finally setting off for home on a dismally foggy morning on the day following adjournment. Every inch of Washington's carriage was packed. An inveterate consumer, he had spent more than one hundred pounds—roughly what a skilled tradesman would earn in four years—on shopping sprees during his eight weeks in the city. He had purchased silk stockings and ribbed hose, a toothbrush, a razor strop, shoes, shoe polish, gloves, pamphlets, bed linen, and a nutcracker, and for Martha he had bought gloves, a pocketbook, a nightgown, and snuff. For his house, Washington acquired a bell, twenty yards of fabric, and twenty-six yards of ribbon. He was taking home wool and cotton to be spun by his female slaves. He had also bought shoes and boots for his body servant, Billy Lee. The extra weight on the carriage did not slow the travelers. They reached Mount Vernon toward the end of their fourth day on the road.
1

Neither Washington nor Richard Henry Lee believed that war was imminent. Lee thought the ship that crossed the Atlantic with the news of the boycott would return with word that North's government had backed down. Based on what he heard from correspondents in England during the fall and winter, Washington felt that “the Ministry would willingly change their ground” rather than risk using force that would “be inadequate to the end designed.” He certainly acted as if there would be no war. Soon after returning to Mount Vernon, he purchased land and indentured servants and sent a team of hired hands, servants, and slaves to develop property that he owned in what now is West Virginia. He even skipped the autumn meeting of the Virginia legislature in order to tend to his business affairs. Yet while he hoped for peace, Washington provided money and time to help get the nascent Fairfax Independent Company, a contingent of fifty-six aspiring soldiers, onto the drill field. He rode to Alexandria on several occasions to observe their musters and act as something of a consultant to its inexperienced young officers, who were attired in buff and blue uniforms that he had designed for the unit. What is more, Washington did his part to get the Continental Association up and running in Fairfax County.
2

Life, with all its anxieties and uncertainties, its hopes and sorrows, went on that fall and winter for all the congressmen. Confident that Congress's unyielding stand would “save us … an effusion of blood,” John Dickinson made improvements to Fairhill, his country estate, six miles outside Philadelphia. If he was wrong and war came, Dickinson confidently expected that history would exonerate the colonists. Future generations, he said, would understand that the blame for “wrecking the whole Empire” was due to the misguided policies of North's government. Not every congressman was so sure of that. North Carolina's William Hooper thought the great imperial crisis had in part been brought on by the “intemperate folly of … Deluded Men” from Boston. James Duane said that he and his fellow New Yorkers were in a “Pitch of Anxiety” over whether “our Friends in Boston [would] precipitate an Attack on the King's Troops.” Patrick Henry spent the winter grieving. His wife, Sarah, who was mentally ill, died shortly after he returned from Philadelphia, possibly a suicide. Samuel Adams negotiated with Iroquois representatives over the winter, hoping to persuade the Native Americans to remain neutral in the event of war. Every colonist was apprehensive over how North's ministry would respond to what Congress had done. The “Times … are … as bad as they can be,” John Adams lamented. “I doubt whether War, Carnage and Havock would make us more unhappy than this cruel state of Suspense we suffer.”
3

Nor was it only the congressmen who waited expectantly through that long winter, wondering whether war would follow the latest American defiance of the mother country. Several provinces prepared for war. Like the men in Alexandria who were trained by Colonel Washington, militiamen and volunteers in nearly half the American colonies were drilling on lonely, muddy fields, trying to learn quickly how to be soldiers. Even while the Continental Congress was meeting, the rebel government in Massachusetts directed each town to organize its militia—which in many instances had been dormant since fighting ended in the French and Indian War, fifteen years earlier—and train the men at least three times each week. If some men had no musket, local officials were ordered to “take effectual care, without delay, to provide the same.” The Lexington, Massachusetts, militia company drilled only two days each week, but for four hours each time, and when winter's cold was unbearable, the men were put through their paces inside a barn. Before the end of February the British army's intelligence network informed General Gage that thousands of Yankees were under arms and would rally “to oppose the troops” should the commander order his regulars to “attempt to penetrate into the Country.”
4

The first person in London to learn what Congress had done was the Earl of Dartmouth, the American secretary. Born in 1730 as William Legge, Dartmouth had entered the cabinet three years earlier, and because he was responsible for the North American colonies, he found himself at the center of the storm. Dartmouth had joined the government with relatively little experience in public office, but he had the closest possible ties to Lord North. When Dartmouth was only six years old, his widowed mother had married North's father. Dartmouth was two years older than his new half-brother, and the youngsters grew close. Raised together, they were side by side at Oxford and later shared a thirty-month grand tour of Europe. Dartmouth was twenty-four when he returned home. He married soon thereafter, became a patron of the arts, was devoted to Evangelicalism, and acquired a deserved reputation for philanthropy. Among other things, he contributed to the endowment of the Indian Charity School in Hanover, New Hampshire, an institution that slowly evolved into today's Dartmouth College.

Dartmouth took his family's seat in the House of Lords in 1754, the same year that North was first elected to the House of Commons. North's ascent in politics was more rapid. He entered a ministry five years after becoming an MP; Dartmouth sat in Parliament for eleven years before he was named to the Board of Trade by the Marquis of Rockingham. Dartmouth immediately played a pivotal role in the repeal of the Stamp Act, a step that won him a reputation as a friend of America, including a unanimous vote of gratitude by the Massachusetts assembly for his “noble” efforts on behalf of the colonists.

After the Rockingham ministry collapsed in 1766, Dartmouth held no political office for six years, though he was an active player among the Rockinghamites who worried over both what they saw as the monarchy's attempt to increase its power and the disaster that would befall Britain's merchants should war with America occur. Though they never devised a coherent American policy, Rockingham's faction steadfastly opposed the government's colonial policies from 1766 onward, even sharing with many Americans the belief that all English were threatened by the possibility of monarchical tyranny.
5

In 1772, when Hillsborough was forced out, North turned to his stepbrother, offering Dartmouth the post of American secretary. The prime minister hoped that Dartmouth's appointment would be seen in America as a signal of a new ministerial course. Dartmouth, who was forty-two years old at the time, was gray and balding, with soft features and kind eyes that bespoke the warmhearted temperament for which he was noted. Although he knew that he would be out of step with most members of the cabinet, Dartmouth accepted North's tender, delighted by his half-brother's “friendship and good will.” He took office confident that he could “heal the Breach” between the colonies and the parent state, differences that he told himself were “rather in the head than in the heart.” Dartmouth's appointment won the applause of wary colonists, including Franklin, who remarked that the ascension of the new American secretary “gives me room to hope … to obtain more in favour of the Colonies … than I could for some time past.”
6

Like North, Dartmouth played for time, hoping that, in the long run, reason would prevail and the American problem would go away. He sometimes acted in an unorthodox manner to smooth out differences. A year after taking office, Dartmouth made the unprecedented step of writing directly to Speaker Cushing in Massachusetts, bypassing the royal governor. Telling Cushing that he believed Parliament was sovereign, Dartmouth astoundingly confided that he also thought that its “right [of sovereignty] … should be suspended and lie dormant” until some imperial emergency—another war, perhaps—rendered its “exercise … obvious.”
7

Given enough time, Dartmouth might have had some success, although even in a ministry headed by his close kin, he stood virtually alone. When the East India Company's troubles surfaced in 1773, Dartmouth foresaw the dangers posed by the Tea Act and fought a lonely battle against it. “He is a truly good Man,” Franklin said of Dartmouth at the time, but he “does not seem to have Strength equal to his Wishes.” Franklin also believed, probably accurately, that to survive politically, Dartmouth was compelled on many occasions to display a “
Firmness
” toward the colonies that he secretly abhorred.
8

Some Americans had seen Dartmouth as their only hope when the ministry debated its response to the Boston Tea Party. It was widely believed that he would press the cabinet to demand nothing more than compensation for the East India Company. Some hoped that he would push the notion that the “Idea of Taxation might be waived” as the best hope for assuring that the “Dispute might Subside.”
9
But few thought Dartmouth could succeed. Some suspected his limitations, seeing him as weak-kneed, with “no will or judgment of his own” and a proclivity to shrink from battle. Others thought more highly of him, but doubted that he could “singly … stem the torrent.” Many hoped that if Dartmouth saw that he could not prevail, he would resign rather than “dip his hands in blood.” It would be a courageous gesture that might inspire the foes of coercion and possibly stay the hand of those who were crying that the colonists must be severely punished.
10

In the early-1774 cabinet battle over how to respond to the Boston Tea Party, North provided Dartmouth with every opportunity to present his case for leniency. The American secretary, in turn, seized the chance to defend the colonists from what he called the “madness of the people” for revenge. Dartmouth first fought to limit Boston's punishment to the arrest and prosecution of those responsible for the destruction of the tea. When such a mild response was greeted with scorn, Dartmouth urged that coercion be accompanied by a repeal of the Tea Act, but even North refused to back his kin in rescinding the tax on tea. In the end, Dartmouth stood alone. The best he had been able to do was to secure the cabinet's authorization for the royal governor in Massachusetts to act with leniency toward colonial offenders. Dartmouth did not resign when the ministry embraced the Coercive Acts.
11

Dartmouth had been most troubled by the Massachusetts Government Act, sensing that the government had gone too far when it changed the colony's charter. As the summer of 1774 approached, Dartmouth's only hope had been that the other colonies would not unite behind the Bay Colony. However, in midsummer he had learned of the colonists' plans for a continental congress, and thereafter he feared the worst. Others had as well. With war beginning to look ever more likely, Lord North had advised the monarch to dissolve Parliament and call elections. George III complied and, as expected, the autumn elections returned a huge majority for the government. Not only did the Rockinghamites lose a dozen seats, but also North reported to the king in November that three of every five members of the House of Commons would unwaveringly support his government and many more would fall in line behind most of his measures. If war came, the government would enter it backed by a huge majority.
12

Although Congress had met in secret, some of what it was doing reached Dartmouth during the fall. Galloway disclosed to friends the details of his Plan of Union, and one of them, probably Benjamin Franklin's son, William, passed along the information to Dartmouth; Joseph Reed, the Philadelphia lawyer, knew from other sources some things that were happening behind closed doors at the State House, and he was secretly corresponding with the American secretary. However, while Dartmouth gathered scraps of information, news from Philadelphia had always been sketchy, and rumors were plentiful in London. One bit of tattle had Congress looking to Benjamin Franklin, who was still in London, for guidance. According to other hearsay, Congress would do nothing more than petition the king's help.
13
The first definitive word had reached London in October. It was Congress's published approval of the Suffolk County Resolves. With that, Dartmouth knew that all was lost. “They have declared war on us,” he moaned.
14

In early December, Dartmouth, through his informants, had learned that Galloway's constitutional reform plan had been narrowly rejected by Congress. Around the same time, he also received official word of what else Congress had done. The American secretary had reacted positively toward Galloway's proposal, but as it had been discussed in secret by Congress, he could hardly respond to it, at least in any official manner. However, it should have been clear to any perceptive politician—and it seems to have been to Dartmouth—that serious divisions had existed within Congress. While Congress had adopted a trade stoppage, it had not only appealed to the king in a deferential fashion but also urged a return to colonial policies that, until a decade earlier, had been in place for 150 years. Furthermore, Galloway's compromise proposal had been defeated by a narrow vote. Clearly, many in Congress yearned for reconciliation. It appeared to Dartmouth that the way was open to defuse the crisis, or at the very least to avert an immediate showdown, by opening negotiations with the colonists based on Congress's address to the king. Dartmouth suggested to North that a commission be sent to America to begin discussions.