Independence (17 page)

Massachusetts’s strategy was effective. Joseph Reed, the savvy Philadelphia lawyer, was fooled into believing that the Bostonians were “mere Milksops.” A Maryland congressman concluded that the Massachusetts delegates were the “most moderate” in Congress. South Carolina’s Thomas Lynch thought the Massachusetts men were “truly heroic.” Not only were they acting “Without rashness,” but theirs had been “a steady, manly, cool and regular conduct” as well. Three weeks into the Congress, Samuel Adams privately gloated that whereas his colony had once been thought of as “intemperate and rash,” it now was “applauded as cool and judicious.”
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But not everyone was hoodwinked. Recognizing that the Bostonians wished to be seen as “modest” in their hopes, Galloway glimpsed through the “Straws and Feathers” they “throw out … which Point of the Compass the Wind comes.” He rapidly deduced too that Samuel Adams was a master of “popular intrigue, and the management of a faction.” Galloway added that Adams, “though by no means remarkable” intellectually, was nearly unequalled in his skills as a politician. “He eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, thinks much, and is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his objects.” Adams’s manner, Galloway continued, was “secret and hypocritical, and … [leaves] no art, no falsehood, no fraud unessayed to conceal [his] intentions … to incite the ignorant and vulgar to arms, and with those arms to establish American independence.” Others may have been more favorably disposed toward Adams, but, like Galloway, many understood that the Bostonians and Virginians had joined together to move Congress in a more immoderate direction.
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Galloway and his confederates played a somewhat similar game to achieve their ends. Though hardly a shrinking violet, Galloway maintained a low profile during the first three weeks of Congress. While he disagreed with some of Congress’s early steps—especially the selection of his bitter provincial rival Charles Thomson as secretary—Galloway went along quietly. He joined in only one floor debate, taking such a strong stand on behalf of American rights on that occasion that he acknowledged “my Arguments tend to an Independency of the Colonies.” His rhetoric was a subtle ploy to rehabilitate his reputation. In fact, Galloway hoped that Congress would petition for redress while avoiding “every measure which tended to sedition, or acts of violent opposition.” In quiet conversations out of doors with numerous delegates, he also floated the idea that Congress send commissioners to London to negotiate an accommodation. These agents could also provide “solid Information” about the position of the North ministry, so that we “shall be no longer misled by … private Letters,” he added, almost surely with Franklin in mind.
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Once Congress got the procedural hurdles out of the way, but before it could do anything else, an express from Boston brought word that the city had been bombarded for an entire night by British armed forces. The report was false, but the response of Philadelphia—muffled bells rang throughout the city and its residents displayed what one Yankee called “unfeigned marks of sorrow” for the Bostonians—heartened the New Englanders. The news also provoked Congress’s first full-fledged debate on substantive issues. By the time it was learned that the news of the British attack had been inaccurate, Samuel Adams and fellow hard-liners knew that a majority of congressmen had exhibited “firmness, sensibility, Spirit” in the face of presumed hostilities. They were foursquare for the “Interests of America,” said one New Englander.
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Once Congress was certain that Boston had not been subjected to British shelling, it created the Committee on Rights, or Grand Committee, as some called it. Consisting of two delegates from each colony, it was charged with stating “the Rights of the Colonies & the several Instances in which they have been violated … & the means most proper to obtain Redress.” Expecting the committee to report within two or three days, Congress suspended its daily sessions. However, in this deeply divided Congress, the committee’s deliberations spun on endlessly in bitter wrangling on crucial issues as well as in hairsplitting over the language in the report. Days passed. Those congressmen who were not on the Grand Committee spent their time doing still more sightseeing. For those on the committee, the novel experience of hammering out what might be a historic document was initially pleasing. After its second meeting, John Adams wrote that the daylong committee debate had been “ingenious, entertaining.” After a few more blather-filled sessions, he changed his tune. The meetings were nothing but “nibbling and quibbling,” he grumbled, adding that there was “no greater Mortification than to sit with half a dozen Witts” who saw themselves as “refined Genius’s” and were “fond of shewing” their supposed intellect. Things had gotten “very tedius,” he declared.
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After ten days of congressional inertia, Revere again galloped into town, this time with a declaration recently adopted by Suffolk County, Massachusetts, which included Boston. The timing of Revere’s arrival suggests that Samuel Adams and his lieutenants at home had preplanned such actions to steer Congress along the path they desired. The Suffolk County Resolves denounced the Intolerable Acts as a violation of the British constitution and American rights, urged that Massachusetts boycott “all commercial intercourse with Great Britain, Ireland, and the West-Indies, and abstain from the consumption of British merchandise and manufactures.” It additionally appealed to the residents of every town in the Bay Colony to “use their utmost diligence to acquaint themselves with the art of war as soon as possible”—in other words, for local militia units to begin training. Congress rapidly came back into session to discuss these impassioned declarations and, after a daylong debate, unanimously endorsed the Suffolk Resolves and ordered their publication. Not every congressman was happy with his vote, nor was every American contented with what was published. John Adams saw “Tears gush into the Eyes” of some Philadelphia Quakers, though he proclaimed the occasion “one of the happiest days of my Life.”
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Congress then fell back into its inactive mode for nearly another week while the Grand Committee plugged along with its interminable discussions. Finally, on September 24—nineteen days into this Congress—the committee at last announced that it was ready to report a draft statement on American rights and grievances. Congress was summoned back into session that same day and commenced a debate that rapidly built into a pitched battle over the acceptable limits of resistance and accommodation. Fearing that taking an unyielding and intractable stance would mean war, the more conservative and moderate congressmen urged deference. The hard-liners feared that showing the least sign of meekness would not only be mocked in London, but would sow further divisions among the colonists. The members of this faction argued for congressional pugnacity. Some zealots insisted that the statement on the rights of the colonists must be accompanied both by an appeal to each colony to raise and train its militiamen and by the raising of a national army of twenty thousand men. Tempers flared to the breaking point, leaving some to wonder whether Congress could survive the tempest.
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At this moment, hoping to get something concrete from Congress before it possibly self-destructed, Virginia acted. On September 26, Richard Henry Lee moved for the adoption of a boycott of British imports that would take effect on December 1. There was never the slightest doubt that non-importation would be approved, and it was agreed to by Congress on that same day.

But soon there was trouble. Immediately after the vote to embargo British imports was taken, a Massachusetts delegate—probably Cushing—urged a boycott on all American exports to Great Britain. New England sold virtually nothing to England, but the southern colonies exported tobacco, rice, indigo, sea-island cotton, and naval stores (including tar, pitch, resin, and turpentine) to the British Isles. Nearly every Southern congressman opposed non-exportation. Southern indebtedness would soar, Maryland’s Samuel Chase declared, and he added that in a very short time bankruptcy would follow. Other congressmen from the Chesapeake region cried that a prohibition of exports would be especially unfair to them, as their tobacco had been planted before the Boston Tea Party and would not be ready to ship for another sixty days or more. With no opportunity to prepare for non-exportation, such a measure would leave tobacco producers in Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia without an income for an entire year. This furious two-day dispute was the first North-versus-South battle in American politics, and it was nasty. As the delegates walked to Carpenters’ Hall on September 28, many feared the continuation of this combustible struggle. Instead, Galloway cleverly chose this moment to act.
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His strategy, which he had decided on during the summer, was to seek a resolution of the imperial dilemma through compromise. By choosing to present it at this volatile juncture, Galloway hoped to appear to be the very voice of reason and moderation. His great objective was to save the Anglo-American union and prevent a disastrous war. If Congress adopted a temperate declaration of American rights accompanied by a compromise proposal, Galloway believed the worst possible scenario could be avoided. On that point, he may have been correct, for in retrospect, when Congress debated and voted on his plan, it made its choice for peace or war.
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September 28 was a pivotal day for America. The day began with a fog-wreathed dawn, but by ten A.M., when Congress started its session, it was clear and uncommonly warm for early autumn. Galloway soon took the floor and offered his plan in a lengthy prepared address that must have consumed two hours or more, and was probably the longest speech made in the First Continental Congress. It was a dramatic presentation, offered with all the oratorical talents that had facilitated his ascent in provincial politics. Galloway divided his speech into three parts, beginning with an elaboration of how the colonists had benefited from the British Empire. “[N]ourished and sheltered” under the mother country’s “wings and protected by its wealth and power,” American agriculture had flourished and the “liberal arts and sciences … ripened to a degree of perfection, astonishing to mankind.” Furthermore, “liberty, peace and order” had always been the American hallmark. Not only did free speech and a free press exist to a degree unknown in most corners of the world, but Americans were also safe from “all manner of unjust violence.” Nowhere were so many people so prosperous. Even greater good fortune awaited future generations of colonists, for given its dynamism and prowess, the Anglo-American union would rapidly expand westward to the Pacific Ocean and southward into Central and South America. Untold riches would flow into the colonies, creating limitless opportunities.

In the second portion, Galloway warned that America’s rosy future could be dashed should Congress choose the wrong response in this crisis. Britain would never back down again, he said. If Congress defied the mother country, war was inevitable, and it would be a conflict that the Americans probably could not win. America had no army or navy, he reminded his colleagues, and it lacked the means of fighting a protracted war. The colonists, he added, had survived the French and Indian War only through Britain’s help. America’s lone hope of victory in a war with Britain would be through the assistance of France or Spain, and to accept the assistance of either would be to run the risk of becoming the dependent of an autocratic Catholic power. Was it not better, he asked, for Americans to be free and prosperous colonists of Britain than to be vassals of despots in Madrid and Versailles?

Galloway completed his address by stressing that while vassalage to a faraway tyrant was frightening enough, a war was likely to be accompanied by a movement for radical domestic change throughout America. An American revolution was brewing, stoked by the fiery, demagogic rhetoric of agitators, he cautioned. Once change was unleashed, it might be impossible to stop or undo. If war came, and if by some miracle the Americans won the war, Galloway predicted that calamities such as class warfare and democratization would surely be the result. Democracy had long been the great apprehension of most political theorists, and it was especially feared by society’s elite in Europe and America. Galloway did not have to catalog the horrors of democracy for the audience he addressed in Carpenters’ Hall. Popular licentiousness was the least of it. Stay laws to prevent the recovery of debts, the seizure of property, the heavy taxation of the wealthy, and even the redistribution of wealth were thought to be the inevitable accompaniments of popular tyranny brought on by democracy.

There was a way to prevent these dire misfortunes, Galloway insisted. Both the colonies and the mother country were partially correct in the constitutional positions they had taken. American rights were violated by a Parliament in which they were not represented. London, on the other hand, was correct in its assertion that there must be a sovereign head of every government, an entity that could not only oversee but also protect and defend the national interest. Galloway proposed constitutional revision. He urged Congress to adopt what he called his “Plan of Union.” He proposed the creation of a third house of Parliament. In addition to the House of Lords and House of Commons, an American Branch, as he called it, must be created. It would consist of an American Congress, not unlike the Continental Congress, and a president general appointed by the Crown. No act of Parliament that impinged on America could become law without the consent of the American Branch.
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