Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor

by Richard R. Beeman

  TWELVE

  A NEW CONGRESS, CHANGED CIRCUMSTANCES

  WHEN THE “GREENE country towne” of Philadelphia was first settled in 1681 by the English Quaker William Penn, the tenets of the Society of Friends, including religious tolerance and nonviolence, were central to the daily life of the town. By 1775 only fifteen percent of Philadelphians were members of the Society of Friends, but the city was still widely known as a Quaker town, and the adherents to that sect continued to dominate the politics and the economy of the city. In spite of the Quakers’ commitment to pacifism, more than a few delegates were struck by the martial atmosphere of Philadelphia’s public spaces as they arrived for the Second Continental Congress in May of 1775. Thousands marched to the sounds of fifes and drums. “All Ranks and Degrees of men are in Arms,” reported North Carolina’s Joseph Hewes, and “all the Quakers, except a few of the old Rigid ones, had joined in.” Such was the military fervor in the city that supplies of drums, flags and “Colours” were running low.1

  The Delegates Re-assemble

  Fifty of the sixty-five delegates to the Second Continental Congress had served in the First as well. Well-acquainted and for the most part bound in common purpose, they were ready to take on the work at hand. Some of the new additions, in particular, John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin, would add considerably to the prestige and political clout of the gathering. Philadelphia lawyer James Wilson, still a relatively obscure political figure within his colony, would contribute significant intellectual depth to the discussions about to get under way. And Robert Morris, Philadelphia’s wealthiest resident, would prove to be an important representative—for better and for worse—of the city’s powerful merchant community.

  Two colonies would send significantly bigger delegations than the others. New York, which had already sent a large, if largely skeptical, delegation to the First Continental Congress, sent five additional delegates—George Clinton, Francis Lewis, Robert R. Livingston, Lewis Morris and Philip Schuyler. All five wielded substantial political power within their colony, and most would use that power to buttress their colony’s resistance to any radical steps toward escalating the conflict with England. Virginia’s delegation, already one of the strongest in the Congress, would be augmented six weeks into the session by the still relatively little-known Thomas Jefferson—who would join his colony’s delegation when Peyton Randolph, once again having to withdraw due to the press of business back home, departed from Philadelphia after only two weeks on the job.2

  And even Georgia would finally get into the act, though at first it was through unusual means. Lyman Hall of St. John’s parish in Georgia timidly knocked on the door of the Assembly Room of the State House on May 13. He asked if he might be admitted to the Congress as a representative of his parish, which, he told them, had unsuccessfully sought to induce the remaining parishes in the colony to join the gathering. Deciding that it was better to have representation from a part of Georgia than none at all, the delegates admitted him. It would take another two months for the Georgia provincial legislature to get its act together and send a full delegation.3

  Joseph Galloway had spent the early months of 1775 unleashing a stream of vitriol at the key members of the First Continental Congress. The leaders of that Congress, Galloway wrote, were nothing more than “wretches” whose minds were “fraught with dark and sinister designs.” He was convinced that the Congress had as its objective that “ill-shapen, diminutive brat, INDEPENDENCY.” Though selected by the legislature to serve, Galloway declined, deciding that he could have more impact on the course of events by using his influence in the Pennsylvania provincial legislature to keep his colony on a moderate course. Although there remained in the New York and Pennsylvania delegations members who shared at least some of Galloway’s views, his absence would be felt, for there was no one in the Second Continental Congress who possessed his combination of political clout and determination to avoid independence at all costs.4

  The Pennsylvania Assembly again offered the Assembly Room of the State House for use by the delegates. This time they would accept with alacrity. With Galloway’s influence in decline, the leaders of the Congress apparently felt no need to assert their independence from the marginalized Pennsylvania legislator. And with ten additional delegates, it’s likely that the elegance of Carpenters’ Hall no longer compensated for its cramped rooms. On May 10 the delegates formally convened. Although there was probably a good deal of informality and fluidity in the seating arrangements inside the Assembly Room, it appears that the delegates from each colony gathered together, arranging themselves in a circular pattern, with those from the southern colonies sitting on the south side of the room, the delegates from the mid-Atlantic region arranging themselves in a semi-circle on the west side of the room and the New England delegates on the north side of the room.

  In their first act, they unanimously re-elected Peyton Randolph as their presiding officer and Charles Thomson their secretary. The delegates later agreed that “the rules of conduct in debating and determining questions laid down by the last Congress be adopted and observed by the present Congress.” They also reiterated their commitment to the rule of secrecy, but this time underscored its importance, enjoining the delegates to abide by the rule “under the strongest obligations of honor.” This more emphatic reaffirmation of the rule of secrecy may have been occasioned by an awareness that some had not been entirely scrupulous in observing the rule during the First Continental Congress, but a more likely explanation is that the delegates knew they were now involved in a war in which lives might be put at risk by an impolitic sharing of the Congress’s deliberations.5

  Following the selection of officers, and no doubt moved by their powerful memories of the electrifying sermon he delivered during the opening days of the First Congress, the delegates asked the Reverend Jacob Duche to open the proceedings the next day with prayers. He did so apparently to a similar effect, delivering “a most pathetic and pertinent prayer.” The delegates spent the remainder of that second day reading and discussing a report from America’s colonial agents in London describing the unfavorable reception of the First Congress’s petitions by the English Parliament. They also received depositions from towns in and around Lexington and Concord describing the events of April 19. The peace-loving residents of Lexington and Concord, deposition after deposition reported, had not provoked the conflict. On the contrary, the onset of armed hostilities owed entirely to the aggression of the British soldiers, who, in addition to taking innocent lives, “plundered,” “ravaged” and “destroyed” everything in their path. By inserting both the agents’ report and the depositions into the minutes of the Congress, the delegates clearly intended to reinforce their contention that their peaceful petitions to Parliament and the king had been ignored, and that, in spite of the call from the First Continental Congress to put the colonies in a state of defense, the violence that erupted on April 19 had been wholly unprovoked.6

  The delegates next agreed to operate as a committee of the whole, rather than as a formal legislative body bound by parliamentary rules of procedure, as with the First Continental Congress. The “committee of the whole” was a fairly common practice, used for more than a century in both Parliament and by many colonial legislatures, and it would allow the Congress to proceed more informally, with flexible rules of debate and with the opportunity to reconsider any decisions upon which they had agreed earlier. And indeed, the sessions of the Congress during the next several weeks were of a very different character from those of the First Continental Congress. The primary cause of that difference, however, was not merely the procedural device of operating as a committee of the whole. Rather, the fundamental character of the Congress’s business had changed dramatically from the First to the Second. During their earlier gathering, the delegates had earnestly debated the nature of America’s constitutional relationship with the mother country, the extent of Great Britain’s transgressions on American liberty and the best means of obtai
ning a redress of American grievances. By May of 1775, with issues relating to the limits of British power largely settled, and with at least one of the American colonies already at war with Great Britain, the task confronting the Congress was very different. In the fall of 1774, the Congress had begun to act like a legislative body, passing resolutions, such as that creating the Association, that would have a binding effect on the colonies represented there. By the spring of 1775, the Congress, while by no means abandoning its legislative function, began to assume an executive function as well, attempting to manage the mobilization of America’s military efforts against the British.7

  Beginning on Tuesday, May 16, the delegates would start to confront the full range of issues before them. First and foremost, the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord required that they take immediate steps to bolster the military forces not only in Massachusetts but in surrounding colonies. This task was given greater urgency by the news, which reached Philadelphia the following evening, that a small group of American militiamen led by Ethan Allen had made a successful raid on the British fort at Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. In addition to the escalating military situation, the members of the Congress would need to deal with the response—or nonresponse—of the king and Parliament to the various petitions and addresses sent by the First Continental Congress.

  Richard Henry Lee opened the debate by putting before the Congress a bold plan for raising an army. It would not be a rag-tag collection of individual colonial militias, but a truly “continental” army. Although he did not speak on the subject, Colonel George Washington strongly supported Lee’s proposals and, indeed, had most likely discussed them with Lee before and during their trip together from Virginia’s Northern Neck to Philadelphia.8

  But there was dissent in the ranks. South Carolina’s John Rutledge, though ostensibly supporting Lee’s proposal, began to equivocate. He insisted that before moving to organize an army, “some other points must be settled.” The most important of these was the question of whether “we aim at Independency” or, as he obviously preferred, whether it would be prudent to make further requests to England “for a Restoration of rights & putting of Us on Our old footing.” New York’s Robert Livingston, new to the Congress, sided with Rutledge. At that point, John Adams rose, and in a lengthy speech that almost certainly irritated some in the room, complained that Rutledge and Livingston were merely rehashing old business. He reminded the delegates that the First Congress had already agreed that the principles of the English constitution guaranteed to the colonies an absolute independence from Parliament. Any talk of “independency” beyond that purely constitutional relationship between the colonies and Parliament was, Adams argued, simply unnecessary. But of course the question was not that simple. It would prove all but impossible to avoid a discussion of next steps—both political and military—in light of the king’s contemptuous response to the petition drafted by Adams and others at the conclusion of the First Congress.9

  John Dickinson Takes the Floor

  In the midst of the discussion of Lee’s proposal on May 16, John Dickinson rose to his feet and embarked on an extended presentation of his own plan for confronting the present crisis. At that moment, Dickinson probably had a greater claim to representing the views of the vast majority of members of Congress than any other delegate. Although he had made his entrance into the First Continental Congress late in the game, he had immediately enhanced his standing among his fellow delegates by his key role in drafting the language of many of the petitions and addresses that were eventually sent to London. Men like Charles Thomson, who had worked so hard to persuade Dickinson to cooperate in the mobilization of opposition to the Coercive Acts in Philadelphia, while having no doubt about the strength of Dickinson’s commitment to defending American liberty, knew also that his cautious and deliberative cast of mind would likely make him an advocate of restraint, not revolution. But at the moment he spoke, there was no one in the Assembly Room who was more likely to gain the attention of his fellow delegates than John Dickinson.

  His address to the delegates was classic Dickinson—thoughtful, logical but, ultimately, cautious in its approach to solving the problems confronting the Congress. He joined Richard Henry Lee in supporting “Vigorous preparation for Warr,” and, if the war should persist, “a Vigourous prosecution of it.” But the bulk of his speech, lasting nearly an hour, amounted to a plea for continuing efforts at “a reconciliation if it is possible.” However much he might have hoped for a good result from the First Congress’s petitions to the king, Parliament and people of Great Britain, Dickinson had been shocked when he heard news of Lexington and Concord. He would describe those events in a letter to Arthur Lee as an “inexpressibly cruel War began with the butchery of unarm’d Americans.” He now had to face the fact that the British had not been swayed either by the righteousness of the Americans’ cause or the logic of their petitions. “The Rescript to our petition,” he concluded “is written in Blood. The impious War of Tyranny against Innocence has commenc’d in the neighbourhood of Boston.” And yet, at least initially, Dickinson told Lee that the repressive actions of the British were an aberration. He continued to tell himself that they were the work of a “few worthless persons,” “fools and knaves,” who had somehow come to dominate the British ministry. And he saw reason for hope. As the Second Continental Congress was preparing to meet, Dickinson found cause for optimism in the news that nearly 400 London merchants had petitioned Parliament to ease up on their coercive policies toward the Americans. (He seemed to ignore evidence that at least an equal number of London merchants sided with the government’s punitive policies.) By Dickinson’s reasoning, if Congress remained firm, but at the same time resisted the temptation to act rashly, a sufficient number of the members of Parliament would see the error of their ways.10

  In his May 16 speech Dickinson suggested that while the colonies should vigorously resist any British attempt to tax them for the purposes of raising a revenue, they should cede to Parliament the right to regulate America’s trade for the good of the whole empire. Silas Deane recorded his “disgust” with the spirit of timidity underlying Dickinson’s speech, acknowledging that Dickinson had argued his points “smoothly,” but, ultimately, “sophistically.”11

  Dickinson continued to argue for further attempts at reconciliation in subsequent weeks. In a lengthy and elaborately constructed speech, which he delivered on May 23, he laid out what he believed to be the three alternatives facing the Congress. America could, he began, move forward with preparations for war without making any effort either to petition the king or to send agents to England in search of an accommodation. While this might have the effect of “encourag[ing] our friends and terrify[ing] our enemies,” it also ran the risk, if the British did not back down, of having “the War brought down upon Us with greater Fury before We are properly Prepared.” Dickinson believed—and he was no doubt correct—that the king and his ministers would not stand down in the face of American preparations for war. In his analysis of the mood of Parliament and the ministry, he displayed a sophisticated understanding not only of the workings of the English government but also of the balance of power within Parliament and the ministry. And the picture he painted was a gloomy one. While acknowledging that America had a few friends in Parliament—men like Lord Chatham and Edmund Burke—he noted, acerbically and accurately, that those very men were deemed to be “personally odious to the King.” And, lest Americans fool themselves that there was some hidden reservoir of support for them in the Parliament at large, he correctly observed that a clear majority of the members of Parliament believed that Great Britain was “contesting for her very existence in this Dispute with America.” As long as the majority held that view, a satisfactory resolution of the conflict would be impossible. To make matters worse, there was every indication that the people of England, at least in their present, ill-informed state of mind, fully supported the belligerent views of their parliamentary representatives.
The result, he predicted, would be almost certain war, with “many valuable lives lost that might be saved & much other Destruction that might perhaps be prevented.”12

  Dickinson’s description of the likely war that would ensue may have struck many of his listeners as excessively pessimistic, but as things turned out it was also prescient. The popular outrage following Lexington and Concord may have led to a sense of self-righteous exhilaration within America—that Americans could, because their cause was just, win a quick and speedy victory over their adversary. But, Dickinson warned, “we have not yet tasted deeply of that bitter Cup called the Fortunes of War.”

  The Multitude thrown out of Employ by the loss of their Fisheries and the stoppage of their Trade—Disease breaking out among their Troops unaccustomed to the Confinement of an Encampment—Divisions in any one province which might interrupt provisions or Relief going to their Aid by Land—the Enemies superiority forbidding it by Sea—the Difficulties from Distance if no other Objections—The danger of insurrection by Negroes in Southern Colonies—incursions of Canadians & Indians upon the Northern Colonies.

  And perhaps even more to be feared: the “false hopes—selfish designs” and “Civil Discords” that inevitably accompanied the “tedium” of a long and bloody war. It was imperative, Dickinson insisted, that Americans exhaust every possibility before plunging themselves into such a struggle.13