Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor

by Richard R. Beeman

  The individual most incensed by the way in which the fiction of the British peace commissioners had caused Americans to deceive themselves about the prospects of peace was not the voluble John Adams, but the ever-self-controlled General Washington. On a visit to Philadelphia at the end of May to confer with members of Congress on a wide range of future military strategies and operations, Washington heard altogether too much talk among at least some members about the possibility that the arrival of a peace commission might bring the crisis with England to an end. He was angered at such talk, considering it hopelessly unrealistic, for he was convinced that the promise of a peace commission had been intended solely to mislead Americans. Reporting his experience in Philadelphia in a letter to one of his brothers, he let loose his contempt for those members of Congress “still feeding themselves upon the dainty food of reconciliation.” The only “commissioners” likely ever to appear in America, Washington, predicted, would be “Hessians and other Foreigners”—that is, mercenary troops.14

  Meanwhile, during the late winter and early spring of 1776, America’s military fortunes showed modest signs of improvement after the disastrous defeat in Quebec in January. In late February, a hastily assembled corps of North Carolina militiamen had won a minor, highly localized skirmish over an even more motley group of North Carolina loyalists at Moore’s Creek. And a newly outfitted version of an “American navy” fought an inconclusive battle with British ships in Nassau, in the Bahamas, on March 3–4.15

  At nearly the same time, George Washington’s army scored its first really important victory at Dorchester Heights in Boston. Ever since his arrival in Boston, Washington had understood that the 100-foot-high bluff at Dorchester, which looked out over Boston from the south, was of even greater strategic value than Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill. The British general in Boston, William Howe, had never bothered to fortify the area because he was confident that British troops could simply sally forth and repel any American attempt to occupy the bluff. Washington had a brilliant move up his sleeve. He arranged to have a herd of oxen pull tens of thousands of pounds of captured British cannons that had recently been hauled to Boston from Fort Ticonderoga up the hill in the dead of night. And then, on the night of March 4, 1776, some 2,000 of his troops moved up the hill into the Dorchester Heights. They immediately began to install prefabricated fortifications to enable them to defend themselves should Howe and his troops attempt to retake the position. The British general, when confronted with this surprise takeover of the most strategic position in all of Boston, had two options. He could unleash his own army of some 2,400 men to retake the Heights, or he could allow Washington’s men to remain there, a decision tantamount to giving Washington’s army effective control over Boston. Unwilling to cede Boston so easily, Howe was planning a counterattack, but as he was ready to launch it, a huge snowstorm descended late in the day on March 5, frustrating his plans. Forced to reconsider his tactics, Howe informed Washington on March 8 that he and his troops were prepared to leave the city, and leave it undamaged, if Washington would guarantee their safe departure. Washington, although he was fully ready for battle, agreed, and on March 17, Howe and his forces left Boston. Washington was understandably gleeful at his long-awaited success in Boston, but his self-restraint and sense of dignity must have been tested constantly both by the paucity of arms, ammunitions, supplies and troops provided him by the Congress and by the extent to which members of Congress continued to attempt to micromanage his command.16

  Alas, the news from Canada, which both Washington and the Congress were committed to occupying, was going from bad to worse. In spite of ongoing attempts to win the minds, hearts or military garrisons of the British and French in Canada, the American army’s efforts there continued to prove disastrous. In mid-March Congress decided to send a mission to Canada, including two of its own members, Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Chase, to inspect the situation first hand. It took a while for the commissioners to get organized, and they did not leave until early April. The trip proved to be an unbelievably arduous one, so much so that Franklin, seventy years old and feeling “a fatigue that at my time of life may prove too much for me,” sat down “to write a few Friends by way of Farewell.” And what the American commissioners saw caused them nothing but gloom. By May 1 they had concluded that there was no hope of winning the Canadians over to the American side, and by the end of May they had become convinced that the American troops there were hopelessly outmatched by British forces. Indeed, they were appalled by the state of the American army. They described its officers as “unfit,” the regular soldiers essentially out of control and the supplies “scanty & precarious,” reduced to “a few half Starved cattle & trifling quantities of flour.”17

  Quite simply the Canadian venture had proved a disaster. By June 4, John Hancock, as president of the Congress, finally wrote to the legislatures of the American colonies that “by the best Intelligence from Canada, it appears, that our Affairs in that Quarter wear a melancholy Aspect. . . . Our Continental Troops alone are unable to stem the Torrent.” To some, the Americans’ travail in Canada seemed only to provide further proof of the pernicious character of British rule, and therefore to make an American declaration of independence all the more urgent. To others, however, and to John Dickinson in particular, the clear evidence of America’s military weakness in that part of the continent reinforced the belief that a premature American declaration of independence might result in political and military humiliation for the colonies.18

  The Congress’s earlier agreement on a boycott on trade with Great Britain was already beginning to have negative effects on American commerce. One obvious way to offset those effects was to begin to develop trading relationships with other nations outside the British mercantilist system. But now, in the aftermath of the Prohibitory Act, the delegates also needed to agree on more aggressive policies aimed at combating the British declaration of war on American commerce. Looking ahead at least to the possibility of independence, the Congress began to make overtures to other European nations, France in particular, to form alliances that would not only bolster American trade but perhaps also provide the necessary aid to strengthen the American war effort. And now, at least a few in the Congress, led by Sam Adams and Benjamin Franklin, began to press the delegates to think about a formal union among the “united states” once independence was declared.

  On February 14, even before they had gotten word of the passage of the Prohibitory Act, the delegates had begun to discuss the importance of foreign alliances. John Penn of North Carolina wrote to a member of his colony’s provincial congress expressing his concern that the British might create military and trade alliances with other nations to bring America to its knees and suggested that the “united colonies” needed to do the same thing. At the same time, Penn recognized the consequences of doing so; he understood that in order to forge alliances with other nations, particularly countries like France that had a natural enmity with Great Britain, America might need to convince those nations that Americans were serious about effecting a “total separation” from the British Empire.19

  Penn’s analysis was right on target both with respect to the necessity of entering into foreign alliances and of the potential consequences of doing so. Two days later, on February 16, George Wythe of Virginia reported that the Virginia Convention, following the same logic articulated by John Penn, had passed a resolution proposing that all American ports should be opened to all nations except Great Britain, Ireland and the British West Indies. And the Virginians were willing to go further. To protect American ships involved in that trade, they were prepared to grant letters of mark to private citizens, authorizing them to arm their vessels and seize British ships on the high seas. Wythe thought that the Congress should go even further than the action proposed by the Virginia Convention. Believing that a vital part of opening up trade to the Americans as well as combating British attacks on American ships was to move decisively to enter into commercial treaties w
ith other foreign powers, particularly France and Spain, he introduced a formal proposal to that effect.20

  Wythe’s proposals apparently produced a lengthy argument in the Congress, for everyone in the room realized the consequences of moving in that direction. The combination of the boycott on trade with Great Britain and an aggressive attempt to open up trade with nations outside the British Empire would amount to a decision to abandon the most important connection—mutually beneficial trade—holding the empire together. The inevitable result, almost everyone understood, might well be an “independency” from that empire. They would debate the matter off and on for several weeks until, on March 19, the Congress finally agreed to arm vessels to defend themselves against, and even aggressively attack, any British ships that threatened their commerce. In the midst of the debate on how to implement the specifics of that policy, Wythe and Richard Henry Lee proposed adding language to the preamble of the proposal stating that King George III, and not Parliament, was “Author of our Miseries.” Again, everyone in the room understood the significance of those words—by speaking of the king in that way in a formal resolution, the delegates would be taking one more step, as one delegate phrased it, toward “severing the King from Us forever.” The delegates rejected Wythe and Lee’s language, but the escalation of America’s naval battle with the British narrowed still further any hope for reconciliation.21

  Congress continued to dither, however, over whether to open all American ports to trade with Great Britain’s foreign rivals. While the concern that such a step might amount to a virtual declaration of independence weighed heavily, there was also a significant, and realistic, concern among some that the complexities of negotiating diplomatic alliances with other nations would create new problems. John Adams, who was emphatically in favor of opening American ports to all trade except that of the British, nevertheless clearly understood the obstacles. As early as October of 1775, Adams had begun to make a list of questions that needed to be answered. In a series of letters to James Warren, he began to explore the “complicated subject of Trade.” In the absence of reliable trading relations with foreign nations other than Great Britain, the effect on the American colonial economy could well be devastating. It would require, Adams observed, a fundamental change in “our Habits, our Prejudices, our Palates, our Taste in Dress, furniture, Equipage, Architecture, &c.” Did Americans, he asked, have sufficient virtue to give up on some of the luxuries they had enjoyed, to become “mere Husbandmen, Mechanicks & Soldiers?” He acknowledged that they might be able to bear such deprivation for a while, but how long could they hold out—a few months, a year? Embedded in Adams’s question was a condescension toward the life styles of Americans less privileged than a Braintree lawyer, but the question was nevertheless on target. And the answer was not clear. He posed a similar list of questions about the likelihood of replacing the lost trade from the British with new trading relations with foreign nations. Would other nations, with no strong attachments to America, be willing to “run the risque of escaping Men of War, and the Dangers of an unknown Coast?” Again, the answers were not clear.22

  Back in November of 1775, the Congress had established a Secret Committee to “correspond with our friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world,” but whose most immediate task would be to quietly test the waters about the likelihood of obtaining useful foreign alliances. Initially composed of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Johnson, John Dickinson and John Jay, the committee later added the wealthy and worldly Philadelphian Robert Morris, who perhaps knew the world of international commerce better than any other American. It has been argued with considerable persuasiveness that this Secret Committee was, in effect, the beginning what we now call the Department of State. Its primarily moderate members (excepting Franklin) immediately began to reach out to diplomats in other nations. Their early efforts were facilitated by the presence in Philadelphia of a Frenchman, Julien Achard de Bonvouloir, who though claiming to be a “traveler out of curiousity,” had in fact been sent by the French government to see if France might gain some advantage from the trouble between Britain and America. In late January, two other French emissaries, Pierre Penet and Emmanuele de Pliarne, also began discussions with members of the Secret Committee.23

  Encouraged by their discussions with the three Frenchmen, the Secret Committee decided in early March of 1776 to send immediately Silas Deane of Connecticut to France to begin exploring the possibility of an alliance. The committee hoped that Deane would be able to ingratiate himself with the wily French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, in the hopes of getting him to agree to provide more substantive aid to the American colonies. Unfortunately, the ship on which Deane was supposed to sail was involved in an accident as it was leaving port, and even when he did finally make it to France, it was clear that the French were not yet ready to commit themselves to an American cause whose outcome was anything but certain.24

  The eventual failure of Silas Deane’s mission lent credibility to John Adams’s earlier skepticism about whether other nations would be willing to “run the risque” of an alliance with the colonies. The members of Congress found themselves in a triple bind. First, those reluctant to declare American independence feared that entering into trade and diplomatic alliances with England’s enemies would make such a declaration inevitable. Yet, it would be significantly more difficult to win the war and achieve a secure and durable peace without first obtaining some commitments from nations like France and Spain, which had both the commercial markets and the military power to help America look after its own interests in a highly competitive European environment with a shifting balance of power. But France and Spain, were unlikely to make any meaningful commitments to the Americans unless they had some strong guarantees that the colonies would not back down and accept some offer of conciliation from the British. It was simply not in their interest to commit resources to America if the only consequence of that would be to allow the Americans the leverage to be reunited with their mother country, thereby strengthening Great Britain’s position within the balance of power of Europe.

  On April 6, still plagued by uncertainty about the likelihood of establishing successful alliances with nations like France and Spain, the Congress nevertheless moved forward to adopt the resolution that the Virginians and the New Englanders in particular had been agitating for:

  Resolved, That any goods, wares and merchandises, except such as are of the growth, production or manufacture from any country under the dominion of the king of great Britain, and except East India tea, may be imported from any other parts of the world to the thirteen United Colonies by the inhabitants therof.

  The exclusion of East India Company tea, a product from a country not formally under British dominion, was hardly a subject of controversy given the fact that it was that much-maligned tea that had set off so much of the ensuing ruckus in the first place. And there was one other noteworthy provision as well: as had been the case with the adoption of the Articles of Association, the importation of slaves from any part of the world was expressly prohibited.25

  The important step of opening up American trade to the rest of the world, coming just a few weeks after news of the retreat of the British out of the capital of Boston, provided at least a temporary boost to many delegates who had been suffering through a frustrating first quarter of the year 1776. But as April dragged into May, with still no sign of the “phantom” peace commissioners, the patience of many of the delegates—not to mention that of the people out of doors—began to fray. “This Story of Commissioners,” John Adams wrote Abigail, “is as arrant an Illusion as ever was hatched in the Brain of an Enthusiast, a Politician, or a Maniac. I have laugh’d at it—scolded at it—griev’d at it—and I don’t know but I may at an unguarded Moment have rip’d at it, but it is vain to Reason against such Delusions.” Sam Adams, writing to his good friend and fellow Bostonian James Warren on April 16, acknowledged that the interminable wait for the nonexistent peace commissione
rs “trys my Patience.” Unlike his cousin, he had largely kept his annoyance with the “moderate prudent Whigs” who were still dragging their feet to himself. But by mid-April he too was running out of patience. “Their Moderation has brought us to this Pass,” he observed, “and if they were to be regarded, they would continue the conflict a Century.” He wrote, with remarkable eloquence, “The Child Independence is now struggling for Birth. I trust that in a short time it will be brought forth, and in Spite of Pharaoh all America shall hail the dignified stranger.”26

  While Tom Paine’s Common Sense may have laid out the logic of independence in plain and bold language, in April of 1776, it was apparent that words alone would not propel Americans—or their representatives in Congress—to take that audacious leap. The path toward independence was by no means a straight one, and there remained many bumps along the way.

  TWENTY-TWO

  FOURTEEN PATHS TO INDEPENDENCE

  AMERICA’S DECISION FOR independence was never one that a single Congress, representing the supposedly “united colonies,” could make alone. While it was gaining in authority as the body responsible for overseeing America’s military defense against Great Britain, the Continental Congress remained the servant, not the master, of the thirteen legislative bodies to which the Congress’s delegates reported. During May and June of 1776, it became more and more apparent that the decision-making process involved, at the very least, fourteen political agencies. While the decision of the delegates to the Continental Congress on July 2, 1776, to approve a resolution endorsing American independence would prove, in John Adams’s words, “the most memorable epocha in the History of America,” the legitimacy of that decision rested on the approval of the thirteen colonial legislative bodies that had elected them.

  By May 1776, with most of the thirteen provincial legislatures in the American colonies operating as extra-legal conventions or congresses, the claims of those bodies to any legitimacy rested not on royal charters but on the opinions of the people in the colonies in whose name they claimed to be acting. Similarly, the three assemblies that remained legally intact—those in the proprietary colony of Pennsylvania and in the independently chartered colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut—were by May 1776 increasingly sensitive to the fact that their authority rested not on some ancient charter but on the will of the people. Indeed, more and more, the thoughts and actions of each of America’s colonial legislatures were being influenced by the actions of a wide variety of extra-governmental groups—local committees of correspondence and committees of safety that claimed to be speaking and acting on behalf of the citizenry at large. To an extent greater than ever before, the dynamic of events during the months of May and June of 1776 would involve a dialectic among all of the agencies of political action—official and extra-governmental, local, provincial and continental—all across America.