Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor

by Richard R. Beeman

  3.Ward, War of Revolution, 1: 163–180.

  4.Ibid.; Ferling, Almost a Miracle, pp. 96–99.

  5.John Hancock to George Washington, Jan. 20, 1776, in GW Papers, R.S., 3: 152–153; Thomas Lynch to Philip Schuyler, Jan. 20, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 125.

  6.JCC, 4: 241–242; John Hancock to George Washington, Jan. 20, 1776, GW Papers, R.S., 3: 152–153.

  7.George Washington, Circular to the governments of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, Jan. 19, 1776, GW Papers, R.S., 3: 145; George Washington to John Hancock, Jan. 19, 1776, ibid., 3: 146–147.

  8.George Washington to John Hancock, Jan. 30, 1776, ibid., 3: 214–219.

  9.Francis Lightfoot Lee to Richard Henry Lee, Jan. 8, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 58–59; Samuel Ward to his daughter, Jan. 8, 1776, ibid., 3: 61.

  10.This account of Drummond’s negotiations with members of the Congress is drawn largely from Ferling, Independence, pp. 226–230. See also the extended note in Smith, Letters, 3: 24–27.

  11.Ferling, Independence, pp. 227–228; Smith, Letters, 3: 24–25. Lord Drummond’s Notes, Jan. 3–9, 1776, ibid., 3: 22.

  12.Charles Page Smith, James Wilson, 1742–1798 (Westport, CT, 1956), pp. 36–37, 54–58; Flower, John Dickinson, pp. 143–144; see also Smith, Letters, 3: 63–64n.

  13.Dickinson, “Proposed Resolutions for Negotiating with Great Britain,” Jan. 9–24, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 65–66.

  14.Ibid., 3: 66–68.

  CHAPTER 20—“THE SCALES HAVE FALLEN FROM OUR EYES”

  1.John Hancock to Thomas Cushing, Jan. 17, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 104–106.

  2.Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York, 1976), p. 74; Corner, ed., Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, pp. 114–115.

  3.There have been numerous biographies of Paine. This account has been drawn primarily from Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, pp. 1–17, 71–106; Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (New York, 2007), pp. 14–100; David Freeman Hawke, Paine (New York, 1974), pp. 7–51; and Jack Fruchtman, Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom (New York, 1994), pp. 15–79.

  4.Nelson, Thomas Paine, pp. 16–22; Hawke, Paine, pp. 10–11.

  5.Nelson, Thomas Paine, pp. 37–43.

  6.Paine, The Case for the Officers of the Excise (London, 1772). The passage quoted here is from the online edition of Paine’s work, taken from Moncure Daniel Conway, ed., The Writings of Thomas Paine, 4 vols. (New York, 1894), vol. IV. http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1083&chapter=19334&layout=html&Itemid=27.

  7.Nelson, Thomas Paine, p. 45.

  8.Ibid., pp. 48–49.

  9.Ibid., p. 48. Nelson, citing the Pennsylvania Evening Post of April 30, 1776, says that Paine’s ship arrived in Philadelphia sometime between December 7 and 12. Hawke, Paine, p. 25, and Foner, Paine and Revolutionary America, p. 71, state that he arrived on November 30.

  10.Foner, Paine and Revolutionary America, pp. 72–73; Nelson, Thomas Paine, pp. 64–65.

  11.The text of Paine’s essay on “Reflections on Titles” can be found in Conway, Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 1, online edition at http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=343&chapter=17011&layout=html&Itemid=27.

  12.Nelson, Thomas Paine, p. 78.

  13.Corner, ed., Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, p. 114.

  14.Eric Nelson, “Patriot Royalism: The Stuart Monarchy in American Political Thought, 1769–75,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 68 (October 2011): 533–572, has asserted that much of the American rationale for their opposition to British authority during the 1770s was in fact backward-looking, relying on political arguments used to justify the seventeenth-century Stuart monarchy. Although extraordinarily erudite, the argument is unconvincing. For rebuttals to the Nelson’s interpretation, see the commentary by Gordon Wood, Pauline Maier, and Jack Rakove in the same issue of the William and Mary Quarterly, pp. 573–582, 635–638.

  15.Richard Beeman, ed., Thomas Paine: Common Sense (New York, 2012), p. 11. All of the citations to Common Sense in this chapter are from Beeman’s edition.

  16.Ibid., p. 13.

  17.Ibid., pp. 17–18.

  18.Ibid., pp. 18–25.

  19.This attack not only on the institution of the monarchy but also on the person of King George III was crucial in breaking Americans’ psychological attachment to their king. For a highly perceptive analysis of this psychological process, see Winthrop Jordan, “Familial Politics: Thomas Paine and the Killing of the King, 1776,” Journal of American History, vol. 60 (Sept. 1973), pp. 294–308.

  20.Beeman, ed., Common Sense, pp. 33, 43.

  21.Ibid., pp. 58, 61.

  22.Ibid., p. 48.

  23.Ibid., pp. 39–40.

  24.Ibid., p. 85.

  25.Ibid.

  26.George Washington to Col. Joseph Reed, Jan. 31, 1776; GW Papers, R.S., 3: 228; see also Nelson, Thomas Paine, p. 90.

  27.Nelson, Thomas Paine, p. 92; Foner, Paine and Revolutionary America, p. 79.

  28.Pennsylvania Packet, Feb. 12, 1776; Pennsylvania Evening Post, Feb. 13, March 26, 1776, all quoted in Foner, Paine and Revolutionary America, p. 79.

  29.Henry Wisner to John McKesson, Jan. 13, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 90–91; Sam Adams to James Warren, Jan. 13, 1776, ibid., 3: 87.

  30.Josiah Bartlett to John Langdon, Jan. 13, 1776, ibid., 3: 87–88; Foner, Paine and Revolutionary America, p. 85.

  31.John Adams to Abigail Adams, Feb. 18, 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, 1: 348. Adams wrote this letter to Abigail from Philadelphia, but he had already sent the pamphlet to her from New York. John Adams to William Tudor, April 12, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 118; John Adams to James Warren, May 12, 1776, ibid., 4: 181.

  32.Adams, Autobiography, 3: 333.

  33.Ibid.

  34.Ibid., 3: 334; John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 22, 1819, Lester Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters (Chapel Hill, NC, 1959), II: 542.

  35.Karen Calvert, Quaker Constitutionalism, pp. 235–238.

  36.Ibid., p. 238.

  37.[John Dickinson], Remarks on a Late Pamphlet Called Plain Truth (Philadelphia, 1776), p. 2; Jacobson, Dickinson and the Revolution in Pennsylvania, pp. 108–109.

  38.Flower, John Dickinson, p. 143.

  CHAPTER 21—“THE CHILD INDEPENDENCE IS NOW STRUGGLING FOR BIRTH”

  1.Benjamin Irvin, in his well-researched and imaginatively argued book, Clothed in the Robes of Sovereignty, asserts that the members of the Continental Congress were under the close, and often critical, scrutiny of the residents of Philadelphia, and, indeed, beyond. This may have been the case after independence was declared, but, with only a few exceptions, noted earlier in this book, most of the evidence suggests that the members of the Congress carried out their deliberations in remarkable isolation from the “people out of doors.”

  2.[New York] Constitutional Gazette, April 17, 1776. See also Ryerson, Revolution Is Now Begun, pp. 153–154. David Freeman Hawke, In the Midst of Revolution (Philadelphia, 1961), pp. 90–94.

  3.Pennsylvania Packet, April 22, 1776.

  4.The full lists of congressional delegates and their terms of service can be found in Smith, Letters, 1: xxvi–xxxii, 2: xvi–xxii, 3: xvi–xxii, 4: xv–xxi.

  5.Richard Smith Diary, Feb. 13, 1776, ibid., 3: 252.

  6.John Adams to Abigail Adams, Feb. 18, 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, 1: 348–349; Sam Adams to Samuel Cooper, April 30, 1776, Cushing, ed., Writings of Samuel Adams, 3: 284.

  7.Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, pp. 297–303.

  8.Oliver Wolcott to Andrew Adams, March 22, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 428; Joseph Hewes to Samuel Johnson, March 20, 1776, ibid., 3: 416; John Adams to Horatio Gates, March 23, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 59.

  9.For a balanced view of Lord North’s intentions in including the possibility of a peace commission in the Prohibitory Act, see Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, pp. 297–303.

  10.Flower, John Dickinson,
pp. 144–145; John Adams to Abigail Adams, Adams Family Correspondence, 3: 347.

  11.Flower, John Dickinson, p. 146; Dickinson’s drafts of speeches to Congress at this time can be found in Smith, Letters, 3: 132–138, 139–145.

  12.Oliver Wolcott to Samuel Lyman, Feb. 19, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 286; Josiah Bartlett to John Langdon, Feb. 21, 1776, ibid., 3: 293; William Whipple to John Langdon, April, 2, 1776, ibid., 3: 479; John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, 1: 381–383; Sam Adams to Joseph Hawley, April 15, 1776, Cushing, ed., Writings of Samuel Adams, 3: 280.

  13.Robert Morris to Horatio Gates, April 6, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 495; Oliver Wolcott to Andrew Adams, March 22, 1776, ibid., 3: 428.

  14.George Washington to John Augustine Washington, May 31, 1776, GW Papers, R.S., 4: 412.

  15.Ferling, Almost a Miracle, p. 127; For more information on the Battle of Nassau, see John J. McCusker, “The American Invasion of Nassau in the Bahamas,” in Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic World (London, 1997), pp. 258–287.

  16.Ferling, Almost a Miracle, pp. 104–107; Chernow, Washington, pp. 224–227.

  17.JCC, 4: 191–192, 212–218. Benjamin Franklin to Josiah Quincy, April 15, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 529; Commissioners to Canada to John Hancock, May 1, 1776, ibid., 3: 611–612.

  18.John Hancock to Certain Colonies, June 4, 1776, Smith, Letters, 4: 136–137.

  19.John Penn to Thomas Person, Feb. 14, 1776, ibid., 3: 254–255.

  20.The Virginia Convention had passed its resolution on Jan. 20, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 262n; JCC, 4: 154; “Notes of Debates,” Feb. 16, 1776, Adams, Diary, 2: 229–230; Richard Smith Diary, Feb. 16, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 267.

  21.Richard Smith Diary, March 22, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 427; Burnett, Continental Congress, p. 139.

  22.John Adams to James Warren, Oct. 19, 20, 1775, Adams Papers, 2: 215–217.

  23.Burnett, Continental Congress, pp. 140–142. See also, Jonathan Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (New Haven, CT, 1985), pp. 3, 49–51; Elmer Bendiner, The Virgin Diplomats (New York, 1976), pp. 52–53.

  24.Burnett, Continental Congress, p. 143. For the elaborate instructions given to Deane by the Secret Committee, see Committee of Secret Correspondence, Minutes of Proceedings, March 2, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 320–322.

  25.JCC, 4: 257–259.

  26.John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 15, 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, 1: 383–385; Sam Adams to James Warren, April 16, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 340.

  CHAPTER 22—FOURTEEN PATHS TO INDEPENDENCE

  1.John Adam to James Warren, May 20, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 195.

  2.JCC, 4: 351, 432; Smith, Letters, 3: 670n.

  3.Adams, Autobiography, 3: 335, 383.

  4.“Notes of Debates,” May 13–15, 1776, Adams, Diary, 239–241.

  5.Carter Braxton to Landon Carter, May 17, 1776, Smith, Letters, 4: 19; “Delegates Certificate of James Wilson’s Conduct in Congress,” June 20, 1776, ibid., 4: 271–273.

  6.Ryerson, Revolution Is Now Begun, pp. 211–216; Flower, John Dickinson, p. 151.

  7.Flower, John Dickinson, pp. 151–152.

  8.Ibid., p. 152; Calvert, Quaker Constitutionalism, p. 139; John Adams to Benjamin Hichborn, May 29, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 217–218.

  9.Flower, John Dickinson, pp. 152–153, Pennsylvania Evening Post, June 8, 1776.

  10.JCC, 5: 424–426; Thomas Jefferson, “Notes of Proceedings,” Boyd, Jefferson Papers, 1: 309.

  11.Beeman, Patrick Henry, pp. 80–85.

  12.JCC, 5: 424–426. In mid-January of 1776, Benjamin Franklin and Sam Adams had collaborated on a plan for creating a confederated government, but many in the Congress were convinced that such a plan was, at worst, merely a ruse to push the colonies into independence, or, at best, would unintentionally do so. As a consequence, the proposal went wholly ignored. Marston, King and Congress, pp. 192–194.

  13.Jefferson, “Notes of Proceedings,” Boyd, Jefferson Papers, 1: 309–313; Edward Rutledge to John Jay, June 8, 1776, Smith, Letters, 4: 174–175.

  14.John Dickinson, “Notes for a Speech,” June 8, 1776, Smith, Letters, 4: 165–169.

  15.Ibid.; Jefferson, “Notes of Proceedings,” Boyd, Jefferson Papers, 1: 309–313.

  16.Boyd, Jefferson Papers, 1: 309–313; JCC, 5: 428–429.

  17.JCC, 5: 431, 433.

  18.Lefler and Powell, Colonial North Carolina, pp. 280–281.

  19.Burnett, Continental Congress, pp. 155–156; Jensen, Founding of a Nation, p. 678; Marston, King and Congress, pp. 271–272; Weir, Colonial South Carolina, pp. 326–328.

  20.Burnett, Continental Congress, p. 156; Jensen, Founding of a Nation, p. 678.

  21.Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), pp. 61–62.

  22.Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, April 20, 1776, Smith, Letters, 1: 563–565; Beeman, Patrick Henry, pp. 80–85.

  23.Thomas Cushing to John Hancock, Jan. 30, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 106n.

  24.Elbridge Gerry to James Warren, March 26, 1776, Smith, Letters, 3: 441; John Adams to James Warren, April 16, 22, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 123, 136; James Warren to John Adams, April 30, 1776, ibid., 4: 153; Maier, American Scripture, pp. 59–60.

  25.Maier, American Scripture, pp. 63–64; Jensen, Founding of a Nation, p. 692; Smith, Letters, 4: 94n.

  26.These developments are summarized in Ryerson, Revolution Is Now Begun, pp. 228–238; and Flower, John Dickinson, pp. 151–154.

  27.Marston, King and Congress, pp. 289–291; Jensen, Founding of a Nation, p. 692.

  28.Jensen, Founding of a Nation, pp. 692–693; and Marston, King and Congress, pp. 291–292.

  29.John Adams to Samuel Chase, June 14, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 314; Hoffman, A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland (Baltimore, MD, 1973), pp. 164–168.

  30.John Adams to Samuel Chase, June 24, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 333; Hoffman, Spirit of Dissension, pp. 164–168; Maier, American Scripture, pp. 67–68.

  31.One of the best accounts of the complicated history of the coming of the Revolution in New York is Becker, History of Political Parties, pp. 253–276; see also Jensen, Founding of a Nation, pp. 696–699; Marston, King and Congress, pp. 292–296.

  32.David McCullough, 1776 (New York, 2005), p. 134; Ferling, Almost a Miracle, p. 124, claims that over the next forty-eight hours somewhere near 130 British ships had appeared in the harbor.

  33.Robert Livingston to John Jay, May 17, 1776, Jay to Livingston, May 29, 1776, Smith, Letters, 4: 28–30, 59n. See also Marston, King and Congress, p. 294.

  34.Marston, King and Congress, p. 295.

  35.Edward Rutledge to John Jay, June 29, 1776, Smith, Letters, 4: 337–339.

  CHAPTER 23—“THE GREATEST DEBATE OF ALL”

  1.JCC, 5: 503.

  2.Ibid.; John Adams to Archibald Bulloch, July 1, 1776, John Adams to Samuel Chase, July 1, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 345, 347.

  3.Historian Karen Calvert, who has emphasized the importance of Quaker religious and political thought on Dickinson’s thinking, notes that his intense fear of dissension and, ultimately disunion, was a classic Quaker fear, and, more than any other component of his thinking on the question of independence, may have been the most decisive. Many historians of American Quakerism would probably disagree with Calvert’s emphasis on fear as a central component of Quaker theology, and, alas, Dickinson, unlike his sometime adversary John Adams, was never very self-revelatory in his writings, so any assertion about the extent to which fear drove his opposition to independence is also purely speculative. Calvert, Quaker Constitutionalism, p. 141.

  4.Drafts of Dickinson’s speech are printed in Smith, Letters, 4: 57. See also John H. Powell, “Speech of John Dickinson Opposing the Declaration of Independence, 1 July, 1776,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 65 (1941): 458–481.

  5.John Adams to Samuel Chase, July 1, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 353; Adams, Aut
obiography, 3: 396–397.

  6.Adams, Autobiography, 3: 396–397.

  7.Maier, American Scripture, p. 64.

  8.Jefferson, “Notes of Proceedings in Congress,” July 1–4, 1776, in Boyd, Jefferson Papers, 1: 314; JCC, 5: 504; John Adams to Samuel Chase, July 1, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 353. Jefferson’s notes on the weather in Philadelphia during this period can be accessed online at: http://classroom.monticello.org/kids/gallery/image/342/Jeffersons-notes-on-the-weather-in-Philadelphia-July-1776/.

  9.JCC, 5: 504.

  10.John Adams to Samuel Chase, July 1, 1776, Adams Papers, 4: 353; Thomas McKean to Caesar Rodney, Sept. 22, 1813, in Smith, Letters, 4: 388n.

  11.JCC, 5: 506–507.

  12.Ferling, Independence, pp. 333–334, states that South Carolina’s delegation ultimately came around to support independence because they had already made a deal with Jefferson and the Committee of Five with respect to removing the clause critical of the slave trade and the institution of slavery from the list of specific grievances in the Declaration of Independence. There is no persuasive evidence to support this contention. It is more likely that Edward Rutledge, who was the principal holdout, after having received the deference of the Congress in the postponement of a decision on July 1, was now willing to join the common cause. See Haws, John and Edward Rutledge, pp. 93–94; Weir, Colonial South Carolina, pp. 291–328.

  13.Adams, Diary, Sept. 3, 1774, 2: 121; John Munroe, Colonial Delaware (Millwood, NY, 1978), pp. 249–250; Ferling, Independence, p. 328.

  14.McKean to Caesar Rodney, Sept. 22, 1813, Smith, Letters, 4: 388n.

  15.Ibid.; Flower, John Dickinson, p. 166; Stille, Life and Times of Dickinson, pp. 196–197. Smith, Letters, 4: 364–365, while crediting Thomas McKean’s description of the voting of the Pennsylvania delegation on July 2, notes that McKean, recollecting the events of that day thirty-seven years after the fact, mistakenly said that the vote in question occurred on July 4, rather than July 2.