American Aurora
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[I]t would not accord with the King’s dignity nor with his interests to enter into a compact with the insurgents. That compact, indeed, could only be of value if they became independent …779
Sunday, March 17, 1776. Today, the British evacuate Boston, and George Washington writes the Governor of Rhode Island:
I have the pleasure to Inform you that this morning the Ministerial Troops evacuated the Town of Boston without destroying It …
Where their destination is or what plans they have in view is altogether unknown; most probably the next attempt will be against New York or some more Southern Colony.780
Tom Paine:
[Washington] commenced his command in June, 1775, during the time the Massachusetts army lay before Boston, and after the affair of Bunker Hill. The commencement of his command was the commencement of inactivity. Nothing was afterwards done, or attempted to be done, during the nine months before Boston.
If we may judge from the resistance at Concord and afterwards at Bunker Hill, there was a spirit of enterprise at that time, which the presence of Mr. Washington chilled into cold defense. By the advantage of a good exterior he attracts respect, which his habitual silence tends to preserve; but he has not the talent of inspiring ardor in an army. The enemy removed from Boston in March, 1776, to wait for reinforcements and to take a more advantageous position at New York.781
Tuesday, March 19, 1776. Today, John Adams writes his wife, Abigail, about Tom Paine’s plan for a government:
You ask what is thought of “Common Sense.” … All agree there is a great deal of good sense delivered in clear, simple, concise, and nervous style … But his notions and plans of continental government are not much applauded. Indeed, this writer has a better hand in pulling down than building … I should have made a more respectable figure as an architect if I had undertaken such a work. The writer seems to have very inadequate ideas of what is proper and necessary to be done in order to form constitutions for single colonies, as well as a great model of union for the whole …782
Monday, April 1, 1776. Today, George Washington writes his aide, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Reed,
My Countrymen I know, from their form of Government & steady Attachment heretofore to Royalty, will come reluctantly into the Idea of Independancy, but time and persecution bring many wonderful things to pass; & by private Letters which I have lately received from Virginia, I find Common Sense is working a powerful change there in the Minds of many Men.783
Saturday, April 6, 1776. Today, in a chilling premonition of the French Revolution, the French Comptroller General of Finance, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, warns King Louis XVI that any protracted French involvement in a war to help America could preclude “relief of our people” and thereby threaten the state:
The state of our finances is not so desperate that if it were absolutely necessary to support a war, we could not find resources—if it were with a probability of such decisive successes as would shorten its duration. But, nevertheless, it must be admitted that we ought to avoid it as the greatest of misfortunes, because it would render impossible, for a long time, and perhaps forever, a reformation that is absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the state and the relief of our people. In making a premature use of our strength, we should run the risk of making permanent our weakness.784
Friday, April 12, 1776. Today, John Adams writes his former law clerk William Tudor:
You talk about Common Sense, and Say it has been attributed to me. But I am as innocent of it as a Babe …
I could never reach the Strength and Brevity of his style, nor his elegant Symplicity, nor his piercing Pathos. But I really think in other Respects, the Pamphlet would do no Honour even to me. The old Testament Reasoning against Monarchy would have never come from me. The Attempt to frame a Continental Constitution is feeble indeed. It is poor, and despicable …785
Monday, April 22, 1776. Today, in Philadelphia, an advertisement appears for John Adams’ pamphlet Thoughts on Government Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies. Adams’ pamphlet directly responds to Tom Paine’s Common Sense.786 Adams warns:
I think a people cannot be long free, nor ever happy, whose government is in one Assembly. My reasons for this opinion are as follow. 1. A SINGLE Assembly is [s]ubject to fits of humour, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities of prejudice … and all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controuling power. 2. A SINGLE Assembly is apt to be avaricious … 3. A SINGLE Assembly is apt to grow ambitious … 4. A REPRESENTATIVE Assembly … is unfit to exercise the executive power for want of … secrecy and dispatch. 5. A REPRESENTATIVE Assembly is still less qualified for the judicial power; because it is … too little skilled in the laws. 6. BECAUSE a single Assembly possessed of all the powers of government, would make arbitrary laws for their own interest, execute all laws arbitrarily for their own interest, and adjudge all controversies in their own favour …
[S]hall the whole power of legislation rest in one Assembly? Most of the foregoing reasons … prove that the legislative power ought to be more complex …
And this shews the necessity too, of giving the executive power a negative upon the legislative …787
John Adams’ pamphlet, Thoughts on Government …, will powerfully influence the deliberations of various states on how to fashion state government. It will prove paramount in the decisions of five.788 John Adams:
I was the first member of Congress who ventured to come out in public, as I did in my “Thoughts on Government, in a Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend” … in favor of a government in three branches … This pamphlet, you know, was very unpopular. No man appeared in public to support it but [Dr. Benjamin Rush] …
Franklin leaned against it … Mr. Thomas Paine was so highly offended with it that he came to visit me …789
Paine, soon after the Appearance of my Pamphlet, hurried away to my Lodgings and spent an Evening with me. His Business was to reprehend me for publishing my Pamphlet. Said he was afraid it would do hurt, and that it was repugnant to the plan he had proposed in his Common Sense. I told him it was true it was repugnant, and for that reason I had written it and consented to the publication of it; for I was afraid of his Work [as] he was of mine. His plan [for government by a single-chamber, popularly elected, proportionately representative legislature] was so democratical, without any restraints or even an Attempt at any Equilibrium or Counterpoise, that it must produce confusion and every Evil Work. I told him further that his Reasoning [against monarchy] from the Old Testament was ridiculous … I perceived in him a conceit of himself and a daring Impudence which have developed more and more to this day.
The … part of Common Sense which relates wholly to the question of independence, was clearly written … Phrases … such as “The Royal Brute of England,” “The Blood upon his Soul,” and a few others … had as much Weight with the People as his Arguments. It has been a general Opinion that this pamphlet was of great Importance in the Revolution.790
Tom Paine:
I have had doubts of John Adams ever since the year 1776. In a conversation with me at that time, concerning the pamphlet “Common Sense,” he censured it because it attacked the English form of government. John was for independence, because he expected to be made great by it; but it was not difficult to perceive, for the surliness of his temper makes him an awkward hypocrite, that his head was as full of kings, queens, and knaves as a pack of cards.791
Saturday, May 4, 1776. Today, an abridged edition of Tom Paine’s Common Sense is published in France.792 Ironically, Edmé Jacques Genět, editor of the French periodical Affaires de L’Angleterre et de L’Amérique, will associate the name Adams with Common Sense by attributing the pamphlet’s authorship to Massachusetts legislator Samuel Adams (John Adams’ cousin).793 John Adams:
What a poor ignorant, Malicious, short-sighted, Crapulous Mass, is Tom Pains Common Sense …794
Thursday, May 9, 1776. Today, a report from the Mass
achusetts General Court (legislature) to the Massachusetts delegates at the Continental Congress:
Inclosed you have an Account of Powder … we not having at present in our Colonial Magazine so much as a single Barrel: ’tis true Salt petre is manufacturing in most of our Towns with good Success but we have only one of our Powder Mills yet at work. [T]he others we hope will be ready soon …795
Friday, May 10, 1776. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:
The Congress then resumed the consideration of the report from the committee of the whole, which being read, was agreed to as follows:
Resolved, That it be recommended to the respective assemblies and conventions of the United Colonies, where no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs have been hitherto established, to adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular, and America in general.796
Sunday, May 12, 1776. Today, John Adams writes his friend Massachusetts political leader James Warren:
Common Sense [Tom Paine], by his crude, ignorant Notions of a Government by one Assembly, will do more Mischief in dividing the Friends of Liberty than all the Tory Writings together. He is a keen Writer but very ignorant of the Science of Government.797
Today, in France, King Louis XVI dismisses Comptroller General of Finance Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, who has warned that France cannot afford a protracted involvement in America’s War of Independence. The king won’t support Turgot’s financial reforms and won’t heed his warnings about America.798 In leaving his post, Turgot writes the King of France:
All I wish, Sire, is that you may always believe my vision was wrong and the dangers I pointed out to you were chimerical.799
Wednesday, May 15, 1776. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:
The Congress took into consideration the draft of the preamble [by Mr. Adams] brought in by the committee, which was agreed to …
Ordered. That the said preamble, with the resolution passed the 10th instant, be published.800
John Adams:
In the beginning of May, I procured the appointment of a committee to prepare a resolution recommending to the people of the States to institute governments … [I]t passed the 15th inst. It was indeed, on all hands, considered by men of understanding as equivalent to a declaration of independence …801
WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 1776
The Pennsylvania Gazette
The PROTEST of divers of the inhabitants of this province, in behalf of themselves and others.
To the Honourable the REPRESENTATIVES
of the province of PENNSYLVANIA.
GENTLEMAN, WE, the inhabitants of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia, in behalf of ourselves and others, the inhabitants of Pennsylvania, conceive it our duty to represent unto this House as followeth:
That whereas the Hon. Continental Congress hath by a resolve, bearing the date the 15th instant, recommended the taking up and establishing new governments throughout all the United Colonies, under the “AUTHORITY of the PEOPLE,” and as the chartered power of this House is derived from our mortal enemy the King of Great-Britain … — We therefore, in this solemn manner, in behalf of ourselves and others, do hereby renounce and protest against the authority and qualification of the House for framing a new government.
The royal charters of colonial government no longer hold legitimacy. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and other newly independent American nation-states have to create their own constitutions to express their various conceptions of self-government.
Monday, June 10, 1776. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:
Resolved, … that no time be lost … that a committee be appointed to prepare a declaration to the effect of the said first resolution, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states” …802
Tuesday, June 11, 1776. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:
Resolved, That the Committee to prepare the declaration consist of five members:
The members chosen, Mr. [Thomas] Jefferson, Mr. [John] Adams, Mr. [Benjamin] Franklin, Mr. [Roger] Sherman, and Mr. [Robert] Livingston.
Resolved, That a committee be appointed to prepare a plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers.803
John Adams:
Not long after [my resolution for the states to institute their own governments], three greatest measures of all were carried. Three committees were appointed, one for preparing a declaration of independence, another for reporting a plan of a treaty to be proposed to France, and a third to digest a system of articles of confederation to be proposed to the States … The committee of independence were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Mr. Jefferson had been now about a year a member of Congress, but had attended his duty in the house a very small part of the time, and when there, had never spoken in public. During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together. It will naturally be inquired how it happened that he was appointed on a committee of such importance … Mr. Jefferson had the reputation of a masterly pen; he had been chosen a delegate in Virginia in consequence of a very handsome public paper which he had written in the House of Burgesses, which had given him the character of a fine writer …804
Wednesday, June 12, 1776. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:
Resolved, That the committee to prepare a plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers consist of five members.
The members chosen, … Mr. [Benjamin] Franklin … Mr. [John] Adams [and three others] … 805
Wednesday, June 19, 1776. Today, congressional delegate Thomas Jefferson of Virginia delivers his first draft (with his own edits) of the Declaration of Independence for John Adams to review, including:
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable self evident; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable …806
Jefferson’s draft appears to reject Divine Right (which has historically been used to justify monarchy) as the determinant of human rights and to use the laws of natural creation as the basis for equal rights.
Friday, June 21, 1776. Today, after incorporating John Adams’ suggestions, Thomas Jefferson delivers a revised draft of the Declaration of Independence for Benjamin Franklin to review, including:
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable self-evident, that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights they are endowed by their creator with inherent & inalienable rights … 807
This draft, which follows Adams’ review, restores Divine Right as the source of human rights!
Thursday, July 4, 1776. Today, the Continental Congress of the United States issues a Declaration of Independence, including,
We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights … that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government …
We therefore the Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled … publish and declare that these United colonies are & of right ought to be free and independent states …808
John Adams will recollect to Benjamin Rush (a congressional delegate from Pennsylvania):
Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after the other, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants? The silence and the gloom of the morning were interrupted, I well recollect, only for a moment by Colonel Harrison of Virginia, who sa
id to Mr. Gerry [of Massachusetts] at the table: “I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body, you will dance in the air for an hour or two before you are dead.” The speech procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity with which the whole business was conducted.809
Monday, July 15, 1776. Today, in the West Room of the Pennsylvania State-house at Philadelphia, a constitutional convention begins work on a Pennsylvania state constitution.810
Tuesday, July 16, 1776. Today, the Pennsylvania constitutional convention chooses Ben Franklin to preside as President. Tom Paine:
They had the wisest and ablest man in the State, Dr. Franklin, for their President, whose judgment alone was sufficient to form a constitution, and whose benevolence of heart would never concur in a bad one.811