Independence (29 page)

Fort Ticonderoga may have been seized in the name of the Continental Congress, but the action had not been taken with Congress’s authorization. In fact, the members of Congress were surprised to learn of the campaign. The authorities in New York were even more astonished, as they had never been consulted by Massachusetts and Connecticut about an operation on their soil. The whole affair raised several troubling questions. As both Massachusetts and Connecticut claimed to lack the resources for garrisoning the captured forts, who was to take on that commitment? Should Arnold be permitted to campaign in Canada? What should be done with the British supplies that were captured in the two installations? Were individual colonies to be permitted to take military initiatives without congressional authorization? But two larger questions loomed over and beyond these matters. One was the question of who was responsible for running this war. An infinitely more thorny question concerned America’s relationship with London while the war was being waged.

(Gary J. Antonetti, Ortelius Design)

Congress first tackled the questions that required an immediate resolution, though in a preview of how slow this deliberative body could be, nearly two weeks were required for it to reach its decisions. By the end of May, Congress had directed Arnold to take no further action, ordered the removal of some provisions from the recently seized forts—lest the British army come from Canada and retake them—and asked Connecticut and New York to provide the troops for garrisoning Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point.
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(Congress was presented with some of the trophies, including a captured drum and flags, which soon adorned one wall of its chamber in the Pennsylvania State House.)

On Saturday, May 20, the congressmen dined together at the City Tavern, as they had done the previous Saturday evening. When they resumed their deliberations on Monday, they took up Dickinson’s proposal, labeled by one delegate, “shall we treat.”
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In other words, should Congress petition the king?

Dickinson was among the first to speak. He began with a stark warning. If those who wished to raise a national army and undertake attendant military preparations were to get what they wanted, they must first agree to pursue reconciliation by appealing to the Crown. “We must know the one Measure will be taken before we assent to the other. If We [the more moderate delegates] will go on with Measures of War, They [the more radical congressmen] must go on with [a] Measure of Peace.” After he threw down the gauntlet, Dickinson took issue with John Adams’s view that the colonists no longer owed any allegiance to Parliament. Dickinson insisted that Congress must acknowledge Parliament’s right to regulate imperial commerce. In fact, he seemed to say, Congress should only deny Parliament’s right to tax the colonists, for on all other matters “They have the Power, We cant take it away.” Next he called on Congress to compensate the East India Company for the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party. Toward the end of a speech that must have consumed hours, Dickinson introduced three motions. He asked Congress to adopt a “humble & dutiful Petition to his Majesty, praying Relief from … the System of Colonial Administration adopted since [1763]”; to send agents to London to negotiate “an Accommodation”; and to inform General Gage of its petition to the monarch and request that he “forbear further Hostilities … untill an Answer can be received to our Answer & proposals.”
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Dickinson privately said in advance that his remarks would doubtless “inflame” many of his colleagues. He could not have been more accurate. His speech on May 23 touched off the second raging debate within a week, both triggered by speeches that he had given. Most of the furor swirled about the issue of petitioning the king. America was “between Hawk and Buzzard,” John Adams muttered. It should not be wasting its time with a petition. It should be resolutely preparing for war, creating the national army that Lee had urged a week earlier and establishing a navy as well. Moreover, Adams and many others who hoped to receive aid from Britain’s enemies feared that an appeal to the monarch would send the wrong signal. It would make America appear weak in the eyes of the world. Furthermore, he feared that a petition would provide Lord North the “Opportunity … to sow divisions among the States and the People.” If all that was not enough, Adams and others were convinced that it was “fruitless” to beseech the king to end the war.
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Nor was petitioning the king all that bothered some congressmen. Many thought that time had passed Dickinson by, that he spoke the language of yesteryear, a time before the colonists’ constitutional viewpoint had crystallized. To many, his views on the Anglo-American relationship must have seemed nearly identical to those of Galloway. Expressing shock at Dickinson’s stance, some of his longtime allies within the Pennsylvania delegation broke with him. Others were openly critical. Lee denounced any thought of yielding any American rights. Patrick Henry warned that natural rights “must never be receded from.” John Rutledge spoke of Dickinson’s proposal “with the utmost Contempt,” said one listener, and insisted that Congress never consider “any Concession” to the “Ultimatum” issued by the British ministry.
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Dickinson had indeed inflamed delegates from every corner of America, and few supported his recommendation to consider modifying the rights that Americans were certain they possessed. But a majority in Congress was willing to make an entreaty to the king and, if the monarch was disposed to talk, to negotiate with him. Some, like Dickinson, anticipated success. Others thought it prudent, for even if the attempt failed, having made the effort would in the long run unify the colonists behind the war effort. No delegates were more viscerally opposed to approaching the king or to negotiation than those from New England, but they were painted into a corner. The Yankees knew that their jerry-built siege army might not last much longer. They also knew that they might not get a national army unless they conceded to Dickinson and his numerous allies.

After two days of savage debate, Congress agreed to four resolutions. Three passed by unanimous votes. Congress blamed hostilities on Lord North’s ministry, which it said was seeking to “carry into execution, by force of arms, several unconstitutional and oppressive acts … for laying taxes in America … and for altering and changing the constitutional and internal police of … these colonies.” As the British army was responsible for having fired the first shot of the war, Congress resolved to immediately put “these colonies … into a state of defense.” It agreed to petition the king. Lastly, though many congressmen voted against the measure, it consented to “opening a Negotiation in order to accommodate the unhappy disputes.”
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Dickinson had won round one.

CHAPTER 6

“P
ROGRESS
M
UST
B
E
S
LOW
”

J
OHN
A
DAMS AND THE
P
OLITICS OF A
D
IVIDED
C
ONGRESS

IT HAD BEEN NEARLY
inevitable that John Dickinson would take charge among the delegates to the Second Congress who wished to follow a moderate course, but there was no such obvious leader for those who favored a harder line. Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams were the best-known among the congressmen who thought it wrongheaded to petition the king, but both lacked the attributes—and possibly the trust—needed to be an effective manager in a deliberative body. Henry’s great gift was his oratorical skills, while Adams was unsurpassed as an organizer and propagandist, but the members of Congress were not the sort to be swept up by a flamboyant speaker or an accomplished agitator.

Perhaps because he understood early on that he could never hold sway at this level, Henry left Philadelphia for home only a few weeks after Congress reconvened, never again to be a major force in the national government. Samuel Adams remained in Congress until 1781 and never ceased to be an important figure, though he mostly stayed in the background, possibly somewhat by choice. He was aware that his reputation as a radical revolutionary led some to see as pernicious anything that he advocated. Besides, though not without ambition, Adams appears to have been less driven to win national accolades than most who played on that stage. From start to finish, Adams’s focus was on Massachusetts. He longed for autonomy for his province and battled for the preservation of the way of life that had long prevailed within the Bay Colony, free from the dictates of a strong central government, whether in London or Philadelphia. Loosening the shackles that North’s ministry envisaged for the colonies was paramount for Adams, and in the first fifteen months of this Congress he worked quietly to achieve his goal, leaving to others a more public role.

Benjamin Franklin sat in the Second Congress, but standing front and center in an assembly had never been his style. Even when his Assembly Party dominated the Pennsylvania legislature in the 1750s and 1760s, Franklin had turned to Galloway to lead and manage the party’s business. Franklin was both a poor public speaker and never comfortable joining in the rancorous and fast-moving floor debates that were part of the day-to-day activity in an assembly. Franklin’s behavior as a congressman astonished some of his colleagues, who, aware of his widespread fame, expected a more flamboyant and outgoing personality. John Adams, for instance, was surprised to discover that Franklin was “composed and grave and … very reserved. He has not … affected to take the lead; but has seemed to choose that the Congress should pursue their own Principles and sentiments and adopt their own Plans.”
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Franklin’s reserve in 1775 also stemmed from his protracted absence from America. Nearly every member of Congress was a stranger to him. He knew most in Pennsylvania’s delegation, but several of them had been political enemies when he had last been active in his province’s politics. He must have wished to remain in the background, at least for a time, to gain the lay of the land. Something else weighed on Franklin when he took his seat in Congress: Many of his fellow congressmen distrusted him. After all, he had been a resident of London for the past decade, where he had once publicly endorsed parliamentary taxation of America. Furthermore, Franklin had once advocated the royalization of Pennsylvania; the despised Galloway was his longtime political partner; and his son, William, was now the royal governor of New Jersey. Both Richard Henry Lee and Samuel Adams thought Franklin “a suspicious doubtful character.” Adams’s doubts increased when he learned of Franklin’s overnight visit with Galloway at Trevose. One deputy confided that some in Congress “entertain a great Suspicion that Dr. Franklin” had returned to America “rather as a spy than as a friend.” Some even thought he hoped “to discover our weak side & make his peace with [Lord North] by discovering it to him.”
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Seldom have fears been so badly misplaced.

When Franklin sailed from London in March, he no longer thought Anglo-American reconciliation was likely or desirable. Still fuming over his despicable treatment in the Cockpit, Franklin acknowledged his lust for revenge, a sentiment for which he was “ashamed,” he said. But he was not especially dismayed to learn upon landing in America that hostilities had erupted during his Atlantic crossing. He was pleased by Massachusetts’s response to Gage’s attack. Even more, he rejoiced that Britain’s decision to begin the “cutting of throats” had only “more firmly united” the American people. Franklin delighted in regaling America’s friends in England with accounts of the action along Battle Road, writing sardonically that the regulars had made such a “vigorous Retreat” that “the feeble Americans … could scarce keep up with them.”
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