Independence (41 page)

The actions of Wilson and Samuel Adams brought Congress to the brink of a potentially great crisis. About half the delegations in Congress appear to have been willing to renounce independence and dispatch emissaries to London to conduct peace talks. But with American independence seemingly so close that they could taste it, the other half were desperate to prevent their congressional foes from ruining their dream of setting America free of Great Britain. This was not the first time that Congress had been deeply divided, though not since the First Congress had a clash of such diametrically opposite choices confronted the delegates. The war was raging, and all knew that it would broaden and deepen as the military campaign of 1776 unfolded. Thomas Paine had brought talk of independence into the open. The war and all that went with it had hardened the attitudes of many in Congress. But just as surely, hostilities had increased the apprehensions of other deputies, quickening their desire to bring the war to a suitable conclusion. For at least some among the latter, the belief was palpable that Drummond's mission presented them with a great opportunity—perhaps their last—to snatch back reconciliation from the seeming maw of independence.

Congress set January 24 as the day for taking up Wilson's motion. All knew the stakes were high. George Read of Delaware, who had returned home to nearby New Castle to tend to urgent personal matters, hurried back to Philadelphia when he learned from reconciliationist friends in the North Carolina and Pennsylvania delegations that Wilson needed support for his “business of the last importance.” Read rounded up Caesar Rodney, his Delaware colleague who was also at home, and both were back in their seats when Congress assembled. Samuel Adams was ready for a fight as well. Wilson's move had to be defeated, lest “we might get our selves upon dangerous Ground,” he said. Adams confided to one of New England's general officers in the Continental army that rather than renouncing independence, the time had come for Congress to throw off Great Britain's “Chains & Slavery” and “assume that Character” of independence that the “great Law of Nature points out” for America.
8

When Wilson's motion came to the floor for discussion on that cold January morning, John Dickinson was the first congressman on his feet. Dickinson's attendance in Congress had been spotty during the past several months, as he divided his time between the Pennsylvania assembly and his service as a colonel of one of the four militia battalions raised by Philadelphia. He took soldiering seriously. Even John Adams admitted that Dickinson “setts a fine Example [and] is much talk'd of and applauded” by the members of Congress for the time he devoted to drilling his men, procuring and inspecting weaponry and powder, and planning the city's defenses.
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But Dickinson knew the crucial nature of this debate. He returned to be heard and to lead the fight. He opened the discussion with a lengthy, impassioned, and legalistic speech that aimed at demonstrating the colonists' “Constitutional Connection” with the Crown at every step from the founding of the British Empire down to 1776. However, the heart of Dickinson's presentation was his call for Congress to renounce independence and dispatch diplomats to London to seek to open negotiations leading to peace. He moved that Congress in a “humble and dutiful” manner petition the king once again—it would be Congress's third address to the monarch in fifteen months—informing him that America was not “contending for Empire & Independence,” but that it sought a “mutually beneficial Accommodation” with the mother country.

Dickinson proposed that two or more members of Congress carry the petition to London, and if the monarch was willing, conduct talks with his representatives. Congress's envoys were to tailor their demands to what they found in England. For example, if they discovered that the armed forces being sent for the campaign of 1776 were so great that the colonies seemed certain to be “in Danger of suffering any great Calamity … likely to have a Decisive Influence on the Event of the War,” Congress's representatives were to scale back their demands. If that was not the case, America's diplomats were to demand an immediate armistice and exchange of prisoners of war, followed by negotiations aimed at securing a renunciation of Parliament's power to tax the colonies, a guarantee that the colonial charters were inviolate, greater freedom for colonial manufacturing and trade outside the empire, the right of the colonies to issue their own currency and pay the salaries of their civil officials, and the “Redress of Grievances.” The principal American concession envisaged by Dickinson was to consent to the prime minister's February 1775 peace plan proposal that each province agree to furnish a stipulated amount of revenue to the imperial government in London. Dickinson concluded by asking Congress to inform the American people that it was committed to reconciliation, not independence.
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Dickinson had not mentioned the negotiations with Drummond, but the terms of his proposal were strikingly similar to those that some congressmen appear to have reached with North's envoy.

Dickinson's stance in January 1776 revealed that changes had occurred in his outlook over the years. He now demanded greater trading rights for Americans. Even so, he appeared willing to consent to more British control of American affairs than Galloway would have yielded in his compromise scheme back in the autumn of 1774.

“Most of the day was spent” in deliberating what Dickinson had said, one delegate noted in his diary.
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The discussion focused on whether to make a statement espousing reconciliation and disowning independence, not on the matter of negotiations. It was Dickinson's misfortune that so much had occurred—that radicalizing events just kept happening, to paraphrase Samuel Adams—in the two weeks since Wilson's speech and in the several days following the culmination of the talks with Lord Drummond. Many southern congressmen, including some who had been ready to concede much in negotiations leading to reconciliation, were outraged at learning on January 16—scant hours after the discussions with Drummond concluded—that Governor Dunmore had bombarded Norfolk. William Hooper of North Carolina knew all too well “the defenceless State” of his colony and feared that its hamlets would also experience “total destruction” unless outside assistance was provided. That help, Hooper had to know, might depend on keeping the Yankees in Congress happy. The following day, January 17, word reached Philadelphia of the failed invasion of Canada, America's first real setback in the war. The news “restrain[ed] the Expectations”—to use Dickinson's words—of America's chances of securing favorable terms in negotiations with the Crown. Not only that, but even some who had been in on the talks with Drummond now spoke of “making alliances” in order to successfully wage the war, a step that they acknowledged required “a total seperation with Britain.” Finally, by the time of Dickinson's speech, every congressman had been startled by the “Surprizing run” of Paine's
Common Sense
and by the popularity of his call for cutting all ties with the mother country.
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As the long shadows of late afternoon fell over the State House, Congress voted against petitioning the king or sending envoys to London. It also declined to take action on Samuel Adams's move to consider Franklin's plan for a national government. But with the thought of solidifying the bond between the colonies, it appointed a committee, which included both Dickinson and Wilson, to draft an address to the American people on the reasons for waging the war. Congress hoped that the address would persuade the colonists that neither British armed forces nor Lord North's machinations could break up the American union.
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Dickinson and Wilson agreed with that, but both intended to produce an address that renounced American independence. Their foes, expecting as much, anticipated a savage floor fight to resolve the issue.

Had the committee completed its work rapidly, it might have won a more favorable response from Congress. But a week slipped by, then a second week, and ultimately a third week passed while Wilson and Dickinson dithered over what to include in the document, and even over the choice of words. The committee selected Wilson, who had first asked Congress to declare where it stood on independence, to write the initial draft. Dickinson, objecting to much that Wilson included, rewrote entire passages, liberally adding and deleting sections. Wilson, in turn, struck out much that Dickinson had penned and crafted the document as he saw fit. In the end, they produced an incredibly lengthy document. It ran some six thousand words, one third as long as
Common Sense
and five or six times longer than most newspaper essays. Wilson was a political novice, and Dickinson was mulish and accustomed to having his way, and in this instance neither was the least bit savvy.

While Wilson and Dickinson wrangled, things continued to happen that hardened attitudes within Congress. Five days after the committee was formed, a packet of London newspapers from November reached Philadelphia. They contained two crucial bits of news. For the first time the congressmen learned what they had suspected all along: North's government was sending large numbers of reinforcements to America for the military campaign of 1776. The papers reported that not only were twenty-five thousand additional redcoats crossing the Atlantic but also that there were indications some troops were to be deployed in the southern colonies. The congressmen also gleaned from the accounts of the autumn session of Parliament that North was sending what he called “peace commissioners” across the sea.
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John Adams, who returned to Congress in mid-February, noted that “a deep Anxiety, a kind of thoughtfull Melancholy” pervaded the southern delegations. The southern congressmen found themselves in the same disquieting situation that Bostonians had faced on the eve of hostilities nine months earlier. But it was not solely Southerners who were anxious. Every deputy knew that a “very critical time is approaching,” as one remarked, a time of the harshest tests on the battlefield, of talks with Lord North's envoys, and possibly of further urgent discussions with the French.
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In this uneasy environment few members of Congress wished to risk making an unnecessary public pronouncement that might be attended with unforeseen, and possibly pernicious, consequences. What might seem innocuous in the winter could in the spring or summer prove to be injurious to wartime morale or unity, or it could undercut the most crucial negotiations that Congress would ever be called on to undertake, whether with London or Versailles.

Wilson's proposed Address to the Inhabitants of America was dead on arrival when at last it was presented to Congress on February 13. It had defended using force to resist the “Calamities” that would result from Great Britain's unconstitutional acts, and it denied that Congress had ever intended to establish “an Independent Empire.” “We disavow the Intention,” it stipulated. Instead, the address stated: “We declare that what we aim at …
is the Defense and Re-establishment of the constitutional Rights of the Colonies
.” It concluded with a rhetorical flourish: “That the Colonies may continue connected, as they have been, with Britain, is our second Wish: Our first is—THAT AMERICA MAY BE FREE.”
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Wilson's proposal was “very long, badly written & full against Independency,” thought a New Jersey delegate, who added that “the Majority did not relish his Address & Doctrine.” That much was sufficiently clear after a brief discussion. Wilson never asked Congress to vote on his Address.
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Thirty days had elapsed between the moment when Lord Drummond believed that a majority of congressional delegations were prepared to make peace on the basis of North's Peace Plan and the day that Wilson presented his draft document renouncing independence. During that month, sentiment for making peace and reconciling with the mother country—if Lord Drummond's sense of congressional attitudes was correct—crested and began to recede.

The Drummond episode also underscores that, from 1774 onward, Lord North and the Crown missed one opportunity after another to resolve the quarrel with the colonies and, with only minimal concessions, to save the empire. Had peace commissioners been sent to America before the war began, as Dartmouth had wished, there might never have been a war. Had North and his ministers stood up to the king and softened, or prevented altogether, his strident proclamation in August 1775 and his speech to Parliament in October, reconciliation might have been possible even after hostilities had begun. Had North named and dispatched peace commissioners in November—when he told Parliament that he planned to do so—and had those envoys been entrusted with the authority to engage in authentic diplomacy, a majority in Congress might have consented to the terms that they were ostensibly willing to commit to with Drummond. Above all, the Drummond episode laid bare the desperation of many congressional delegates who favored reconciliation, raising the possibility that an artful government in London might have gained its ends by fatally dividing Congress, the very strategy that Burke had shrewdly urged North to pursue the previous fall.

But from the moment in January 1774 that they had learned of the Boston Tea Party through the end of 1775, and beyond, the king and an overwhelming majority of his ministers held inflexibly to the premise that all was lost if they conceded to the colonists even the slightest authority that London exercised over America. Beginning with its discussions over how to respond to the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, North's government preferred coercion to making concessions. By 1776 North's government was committed solely to the use of armed force to resolve its American problem. If it proved to be unavailing, Great Britain would lose its American colonies. Moreover, many believed that Great Britain had to succeed in 1776. If the Continental army survived 1776, it would thereafter be a seasoned and more formidable foe, and it might be joined by French or Spanish forces.