Independence (59 page)

The Vote on the Motion to Declare Independence. The motion to declare independence was first introduced by Richard Henry Lee on June 7, 1776, and again in the final debates on July 1 and 2. This document contains the handwritten motion and notes: “resolution for independency agreed to July 2.” It also indicates the approval of twelve states. (National Archives)

How Virginia would vote was never a mystery. Neither Jefferson nor Francis Lightfoot Lee had ever hidden their sentiments on independence. Virginia's three other deputies, each of whom was also a planter aristocrat, had supported their colony's opposition to British policies since the Stamp Tax. Thomas Nelson—described by John Adams as corpulent but “alert and lively, for his Weight”—had lived and studied in England for seven years. Joining Congress during 1775, he had gone home in February 1776 but returned in June, about three weeks before the final debate on independence. Many New England proponents of independence disliked Benjamin Harrison, but they always knew that they could count on him on the question of breaking with Great Britain. Carter Braxton was another matter. He was as conservative as Galloway on social and political issues. During some congressional discussions he argued that America should not declare independence until it had secured an alliance with France. In other debates he argued that an American constitution should be adopted prior to declaring independence. Though he did not broadcast his fears, Braxton doubted that the northern and southern colonies, which were strikingly different in many ways, could long maintain their union; he was not even sure that they could remain united until victory was gained in the Revolutionary War. But Braxton's greatest concern was that independence would open the floodgates for sweeping political and social change. He believed that the Yankees, whom he hated, would try to spread “their darling Democracy” throughout the southern states. Braxton was filled with fears about independence, but like his four colleagues he voted for it.
36

Congress declared independence by a vote of 12–0. The poll of the colonies had not taken long, perhaps only a couple of minutes, but every member of Congress understood the magnitude of what had just taken place. None captured what most must have felt better than Abraham Clark, the fifty-year-old surveyor, father of ten, and veteran politician who had entered Congress as part of New Jersey's delegation only the day before. “We are now … embarked on a most Tempestuous Sea. Life very uncertain. Seeming dangers Scattered thick Around us.… Let us prepare for the worst, we can Die here but once. May all our Business, all our purposes & pursuits tend to fit us for that important event.”
37

CHAPTER 14

“T
HIS
W
ILL
C
EMENT THE
U
NION
”

A
MERICA
I
S
S
ET
F
REE

BEFORE DAYBREAK
the next morning, July 3, John Adams sat at his desk in his small room at Mrs. Yard's boardinghouse and in the light of a flickering candle wrote to Abigail. He wished to let her know that the “greatest Question was decided.” It had been the most crucial decision ever made in America, he said, perhaps the most fateful that ever “was or will be decided” in the history of the world.

“The Second Day of July,” he predicted, “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated … with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
1

But when Congress voted to break with Great Britain, it had not completed its work on declaring independence. Congress wished to issue a “declaration on independence,” as its
Journal
put it.
2
With regard to that declaration, the delegates had four choices: They could adopt the draft submitted by the Committee of Five; revise the committee's draft; send the draft back to the committee for rewriting (which is what Congress had done a year earlier with the draft of the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms); or it could reject the draft, appoint a new committee, and start from scratch. The two latter options were never considered. Not only had Jefferson captured the thinking of Congress and the provincial assemblies, but also the deputies believed they had to act quickly. They wanted to promulgate the Declaration of Independence before the fighting for New York began, and with British soldiers about to land near Manhattan, a clash of arms was thought to be only days away. Yet while Congress was in a hurry, it also wished to carefully consider Jefferson's draft. With some four dozen delegates perusing each sentence, some changes were inevitable.

It was probably shortly before noon on July 2 when Congress declared American independence. As two thirds of Congress's normal working day remained, it formed itself into a committee of the whole and took up the draft. After presumably spending the remainder of the day editing the document—neither the
Journal
nor any other existing document makes clear precisely what transpired as Congress labored over Jefferson's draft—the delegates must have realized that the process was going to take longer than they had imagined. Before adjourning on July 2, the members agreed to begin the next day's session at nine A.M., an hour earlier than customary. It is known that Congress continued its deliberations for two more days, though on each day it allotted some time to pressing war-related issues.

On July 3 and 4, for instance, Congress asked Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland to send troops to the front for the looming battle of New York; sought supplies for the army; appropriated money to hire workers to build a fleet for the defense of Lake Champlain in the face of the anticipated British invasion of northern New York; focused on efforts to keep the Indians neutral; created one committee to superintend defensive preparations in Philadelphia and another to prepare a “Seal for the United States of America.”
3
The delegates also took up a letter from General Washington. The commander requested that Congress “repeat and press home” on the foot-dragging provinces that they must “furnish their Quota's [of militia] with all possible dispatch.”
4
It was this letter that prompted Congress to lean on the three states to rush its militiamen to General Washington.

The bulk of the sessions on July 2, 3, and 4—probably ten hours or more altogether—were devoted to scrutiny of Jefferson's draft. It is likely that Congress had ordered the draft document to be printed. If so, the delegates were able to read in advance what the Committee of Five had submitted and could follow the dissection of the draft line by line as the editing proceeded.
5

That Congress devoted so much time to editing and revising the Declaration of Independence is an indication of just how important it understood this document to be. Fancifully, some congressmen thought the Declaration would somehow motivate America's friends in Great Britain to bring down the war ministry and make peace. Others, no less optimistic, believed that a document that rang with the passionate rhetoric of freedom might inspire the most-enlightened Europeans, perhaps quickening support for America's cause. But every member of Congress knew that the Declaration's primary audience resided in America. Its task was to proclaim for Americans the credo of the new nation, stating what the yet-to-be created government stood for and against. Inescapably, too, Congress hoped that the Declaration would sustain Americans through what was certain to be the fiery trial of war that lay ahead. They wanted a ringing statement that would with crystal clarity lay bare for every American the reasons why the war was being fought.

The congressmen who pored over Jefferson's draft were keen, unsparing editors. They altered nearly half of the introductory paragraph, though the changes were only stylistic, and they made a handful of similar modifications to the second and best-remembered paragraph. For instance, “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable” became “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” These congressmen-editors wished both to find just the right phrases and to strike out all unnecessary words. Two thirds of Jefferson's allegations against the king and Parliament came through unscathed; in four indictments Congress altered only one word. But here and there Jefferson's colleagues made substantive changes to his accusations.

Congress added more bite to some allegations. The accusation that the monarch was pursuing policies of “cruelty & perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation” instead became “cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarian ages and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.” Congress altered some passages in order to be more accurate. Jefferson had stated in one indictment that the king had closed all colonial courts, though in fact only the superior courts had been shuttered.
6
The wording became “he has obstructed the administration of justice.” Congress deleted two charges against the king. Jefferson's rant on the origin and perpetuation of African slavery was cut at the instigation of South Carolina and Georgia, which had never envisaged the American rebellion as an abolitionist crusade, and probably of Rhode Island, a province filled with influential men who were making money hand over fist from the slave trade.
7
Uncomfortable with the charge that George III had incited “treasonous insurrections of our fellow citizens,” Congress revised it to read that the king had “excited domestic insurrections.” That blanket statement served as a condemnation both of Dunmore's proclamation and of the monarch's having at least implicitly roused America's Tories to take up arms.

Toward the end of his draft, Jefferson had charged that the king had not answered Congress's petitions for redress. However, one portion of this lengthy section alleged that Great Britain had done nothing to help the earliest colonists survive in the wilds of America, while another part rebuked the British people for having turned a deaf ear to America's repeated entreaties to their “native justice and magnanimity.” What Jefferson had written about Congress's petitions to the king survived intact, but the congressmen-editors were merciless with the remainder of that section. Congress blue-lined more than half of it as incorrect, imprudent, or simply redundant. Aside from the long passage on slavery, more than 90 percent of what was struck from Jefferson's draft came out of this section. Congress also modified the final paragraph—the actual declaration of American independence—by largely substituting for Jefferson's embroidered rhetoric the simple resolution on independence that Richard Henry Lee had offered and Congress had adopted on July 2.
8

Jefferson's draft was improved by Congress's attention. Congress made the Declaration of Independence a leaner document, one that was more forceful and, in its brevity, more likely to be read. Altogether, Congress pruned the draft by nearly a third.
9
Even with the additions made by Congress, the Declaration of Independence runs just over 1,400 words, not much longer than an op-ed piece in a modern daily newspaper. Only one congressman was anguished by what Congress did to Jefferson's draft, and that was Jefferson himself. Like any writer, he suffered silently in acute distress as his colleagues critiqued his composition, adding words, tinkering with a phrase here and there, and expunging entire sentences. Seeing his colleague's anguish, Franklin tried to comfort Jefferson by explaining—as has many an editor to many a despairing author—that brevity can be more compelling. In his customary manner, Franklin sought to persuade Jefferson through a parable:

When I was a journeyman printer, [Franklin began,] one of my companions, an apprentice hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome sign board, with proper inscription. He composed it in these words, “John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,” with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word “Hatter” tautologous, because followed by the words “makes hats,” which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word “makes” might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would buy them, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words “for ready money” were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, “John Thompson, sells hats.” “Sells hats!” says the next friend. “Why, nobody will expect you to give them away. Why then is the use of that word?” It was stricken out, and “hats” followed it, the rather as there was one painted on the board. So the inscription was reduced ultimately to “John Thompson,” with the figure of a hat subjoined.
10

Franklin's attempt at mollification was, at best, only partially successful. In the notes he took as the editorial work proceeded, Jefferson raged at the “pusillanimous” character of his colleagues for having softened the charges he had brought against the king. He also took the trouble to make a handwritten copy of his draft and to send it to Richard Henry Lee so that he might “judge whether it [the Declaration of Independence] is the better or worse for the Critics.” In an effort to placate his simmering friend, Lee responded that Congress had “mangled” Jefferson's draft, to which he added a measure of treacle: “However the
Thing
is in its nature so good, that no Cookery can spoil the Dish.”
11
Nearly half a century later John Adams told an acquaintance that Congress had “obliterated some of the best” in Jefferson's draft, though it had “left all that was exceptional.” (To which he added, in typical Adams fashion, “if any thing in it was” exceptional.)
12

Sometime on July 4—Jefferson's notes say “in the evening,” though the journal kept by Charles Thomson, Congress's secretary, points toward late morning—Congress completed its editorial work.
13
Adhering to proper parliamentary procedure, the committee of the whole made its recommendation that the document be approved. The Declaration of Independence was read in its entirety and adopted by Congress, after which it was ordered to be printed and distributed, including in handbill editions that were to be “Sent to the Armies, Cities, Countys, Towns, &c.”
14

The members of Congress responded to what they had done in various ways. No reaction was more laconic than that of Robert Treat Paine, whose diary entry for July 4 was simply: “The Independence of the States voted & declared.” He was not so nonchalant in the letters he wrote to friends at home. Paine warned that the new nation could not be “saved by good words” alone. “Our hearts are full, our hands are full; may God … support us,” he added. William Ellery was of like mind. It “is one Thing for Colonies to declare themselves independent and another to establish themselves in Independency,” he cautioned. Elbridge Gerry was relieved that independence, “long sought for, solicited and necessary,” had at last been declared. John Adams thought the step “compleats a Revolution.” Samuel Adams fretted that much “has been lost by delaying to take this decisive Step.” Had independence been declared the previous autumn, he carped, the United States not only would now possess Canada; it also would be better prepared to defend against the impending blows of the British military. John Adams thought Samuel was correct with regard to the military situation, yet he believed it was for the best that the decision on independence had been delayed. By July 1776, he said, all “Hopes of Reconciliation” had been “totally extinguished.” By then, too, the question of independence had been thoroughly debated in newspapers and pamphlets, in town meetings, county committees, and provincial assemblies. The great majority of Americans, he was assured, were solidly in favor of independence. Rather than injuring the cause, John Adams said he was convinced that the delay in declaring independence “will cement the Union.”
15

Forty-two months, almost to the day, had passed since Lord North had learned of the Boston Tea Party and summoned his cabinet to decide how to deal with the American colonists. The road from London in January 1774 to Philadelphia in July 1776 had been long. Leaders on both sides had many opportunities to choose an alternative course. But North and his ministers, and their king, had spurned every American proposal for change, accommodation, and negotiation, instead holding inflexibly to the position the colonists must submit to British sovereignty in all matters whatsoever. Americans had answered Britain's rulers in stages. In the fall of 1774 Congress had embraced the rule of the king and Parliament's regulation of trade. In 1775 the American people had mobilized for war and Congress repudiated Parliament's authority over the colonies. In July 1776 Congress gave its final answer to a mother country that was bent on war, not concession. It voted unanimously for American independence.