Independence

  Lee must have been happy with the declaration on independence adopted on April 23 by the sixteen members of the Charlotte County, Virginia, Committee of Safety. It began with the assertion that the government of Great Britain had pursued a “despotick plan … these twelve years past, to enslave America.” The king, Lord North, and Parliament, it continued, “have turned a deaf ear to the repeated petitions and remonstrances of this and our sister Colonies.” Instead, those rulers had sought “to enforce their arbitrary mandates by fire and sword,” including “encouraging … our savage neighbours [Indians], and our more savage domesticks [slaves], to spill the blood of our wives and children.” It concluded: As “nothing is intended for us but the most abject slavery” and as “all hopes of a reconciliation … [are] now at an end,” it wished the Continental Congress to “immediately cast off the British yoke, and to enter into a commercial alliance with any nation or nations friendly to our cause.”54

  Congressmen may have been pleading for direction from home, but through the winter and spring of 1776 they were aware that calls for independence—formerly a taboo topic—filled newspapers across the land. Once Common Sense was greeted with unbridled exuberance, pleas for independence were commonplace. Most of the scribblers in the press argued that wartime realities made a declaration of independence essential. Between their bravado-filled lines, many proponents of independence acknowledged that America would need considerable assistance from France and Spain if it was to win a protracted war, and foreign aid would require that Congress sever all ties with Great Britain. Several writers hinted, though few said it explicitly, that it was essential for Congress to declare independence in the near future. Some wanted it done before the peace commissioners arrived, anxious that Lord North’s game of divide and conquer might succeed. Others, believing that Versailles was favorably disposed, wanted to act while French help was still possible. Still others, concerned about damage to morale that might accompany military setbacks, urged that independence be declared prior to the onset of the campaign in the summer of 1776. An anonymous New York writer touched all bases in April when he posed the following question to Congress: “Should the American Colonies neglect the present critical moment of asserting and securing their freedom, is it not probable that a few months will put it out of their power of doing it forever?”55

  Some essayists sought to convince their readers that reconciliation on favorable terms was no longer possible. One, who called himself a “strenuous advocate for independency,” maintained that “Blood once shed puts a final period to all other accommodations.” Thomas Paine, writing as “The Forester,” took a similar position. Reconciliation, he wrote, was a “false light.” All hope of being reunited with Great Britain “ ’Tis gone! ’tis past! The grave hath parted us, and death, in the persons of the slain, hath cut the thread between Britain and America.” American submission was the only condition on which the colonies could be reunited with the mother country, said many writers. One observed that “If we reject … Submission and Dependence, we must of consequence be Independent.”56

  Many writers attempted to demonstrate the positive aspects of independence, and especially to equate independence with liberty. “The day in which the Colonies declare their independence, will be a jubilee” to all “heroes who have offered themselves as sacrifices upon the altar of liberty,” Paine declared. Another essayist tried to show that “dependency is slavery,” whereas independence would enable Americans to secure their “safety, honour, and … interest” on their own terms. Some argued, as had Paine in Common Sense, that an independent America wresting liberty from the grasp of tyrants would be a beacon to others around the world. “The lovers of liberty abroad have their eyes turned toward us,” one New Yorker wrote, while another asserted that like “the waves of the sea,” the example of American independence would have a breathtakingly wide impact.57

  Some saw a glorious future for an independent America. With independence would come “peace, plenty, and liberty,” said a Maryland polemicist. In March the author of “Plain Hints” equated colonial America to a tree that was surrounded by impediments and could not grow to its full potential. Free the tree, he said, and it “might soon become the largest tree in the forest.” That same month “An American” insisted that an independent America would be on the road to “eminence and glory.”58

  The foes of a break with the mother country busily turned out essays and pamphlets of their own, though they were forced by Common Sense to shift gears. Previously, they had mostly proffered solutions to the crisis or urged that the king be petitioned for redress, but on the defensive after Paine’s tract, they focused largely on the dangers that would accompany independence. A total break, said some advocates of reconciliation, would cost the colonists its friends in Parliament, powerful figures who could be of help to America. Furthermore, they warned, London would fight tenaciously to prevent independence: A declaration of independence “will unite the whole force of Great Britain and Ireland against us—a force that has hitherto been much divided, from an opinion that we only seek peace, liberty, and safety, in a constitutional connection with Great Britain.” Prolonged wars, these writers added, were filled with uncertainties and dangers. Americans might lose their freedom while attempting to gain it. The colonists might fall victim to a standing army or an American tyrant; more likely, they would become the prey of a European ally who turned on them once the war ended. But the most probable outcome was that hostilities would end in a stalemate leading to a negotiated settlement. Stalemated wars in Europe usually ended in the partition of the territories that had been fought over. Should that happen in this Anglo-American war, the anti-independence writers cautioned, Great Britain, France, and Spain would divide the spoils, transferring some star-crossed parts of colonial America to the jurisdiction of foreign and Roman Catholic nations ruled by autocratic monarchs.59

  “Independence will not produce happiness,” said those who were opposed to breaking ties with Great Britain. Above all, it would be a “leap in the dark,” a gamble that might very well result in untold miseries. Some woes were predictable, they asserted. Only America’s ties to the empire had held together peoples who embraced a rich diversity of religions, languages, ethnicity, and interests. That unity would “burst asunder” with independence, and in its place “the entrails, the heart, the very life of the Colonies” would be rent. When that occurred, America would resemble Europe. A multitude of sovereign governments would dot the North American landscape. Each would be hostile toward the others. War after war, the plague of Europe, would ensue. These writers charged, too, that the proponents of independence were visionaries and “ambitious innovators,” but mostly they were “adventurers who have nothing to lose,” men who had been “exalted by the present confusions into lucrative offices” and who had a vested interest in keeping alive “the publick calamities” that offered their only hope of retaining power. Such men were committed to republicanism, a word these writers employed with a shudder. It was a mantra of many who opposed independence that the whole history of republicanism was a sorry chronicle of anarchy and chaos, of “domestick violence and rapine, war and bloodshed.” Independence, they warned, would usher in republican “instability and unwieldiness,” bringing to an end the order and comity that had happily existed in British America.60

  The advocates of independence fought back. “I see no terror in [independence],” said one, “but in an unconditional dependence … I see a thousand.”61 “We must separate, or become the labouring slaves of Britain,” said a North Carolinian, who added that independence would set America free from “a cruel, blood-thirsty people, the cause of all our woes.”62 As for America’s friends in Parliament, they “may be sincere and zealous in our cause, but they have not been able to do us any good,” said one writer. “If they are generous friends, they will … still exert themselves in our favour; but if they should forsake us, we shall lose nothing.”63

  After Common Sense there was a samen
ess to the pro-independence essays, a redundant elaboration on the themes of monarchical tyranny, British corruption, and London’s habitual warfare. The one exception—and the most important piece pertaining to independence after Common Sense—came from the pen of John Adams. What made Adams’s effort notable was that he answered those who were predicting mayhem in an independent and republican America. Adams laid out a plan of government that was to be an antidote to disorder.

  Adams had been writing about political theory since he was a young lawyer in Boston. As a congressman, he had spoken out on governance when the issue of replacing colonial charters first came up, earning a reputation among his colleagues as the best-informed member of Congress on the subject. In 1776 Adams again spoke out often on governance in America. The impetus for his frequent homilies was not the warnings advanced by reconciliationists and Tories, but the prescription for government outlined by Paine in Common Sense. Adams had applauded Paine’s cogent arguments on behalf of independence. He had also acknowledged Paine’s unmatched talent as a writer, even admitting to his wife that he “could not have written any Thing in so manly and striking a style.” However, Adams was appalled by Paine’s formula for government. Paine “has a better Hand at pulling down than building,” Adams fumed. Paine’s views on governance, he went on, were not just “inadequate”; they were “despicable” and “ignorant.” If the form of government that Paine had recommended was instituted, Adams added, it “will do more Mischief … than all the Tory writings together.” Though Adams did not say so, he had to be worried that Paine was reaching a huge audience. In addition to the thousands who read Common Sense, countless others listened as Continental army officers or town criers read it to them.64

  Paine had suggested that each state be governed by a popularly elected unicameral assembly that was more broadly representative of the people than had been the case in the colonies. Each state in turn would popularly elect at least thirty representatives to a unicameral national congress. Its membership would be around four hundred, in contrast to the fifty or so delegates in the Continental Congress. A 60 percent majority would be necessary for enacting legislation. Paine, of course, did not want an American monarch. Instead, he thought an official akin to the British prime minister would suffice, and he proposed that this official be chosen annually by his fellow congressmen.

  Several aspects of Paine’s formula for government troubled Adams. The size of Paine’s national congress would make it unwieldy. Adams was all too aware of how hard it was to get anything done in a body as small as the Continental Congress. Adams additionally abhorred the absence of checks and balances in Paine’s plan. Nor would Paine’s chief executive be a truly national figure with a capability of overriding the provincial interests of the members of Congress.

  Adams spoke out on these matters in Congress, and he may have intended to write an essay addressing his concerns. In any case, before he could act on his own, he was asked by William Hooper and John Penn—North Carolina congressmen who were about to return home to participate in writing a constitution for their province—to commit to paper his ideas on government. Adams consented. “Borrow[ing] a little Time from … sleep,” as he put it, Adams “wrote with his own Hand, a Sketch” on proper governance that ran six or seven pages in length. Subsequently Richard Henry Lee and George Wythe also asked for copies, and Adams obliged. With Adams’s authorization, Lee paid to have the piece published, and it appeared during the fourth week of April under the title Thoughts on Government.65

  Adams began by insisting that the purpose of government was to promote “the happiness of society.” Republican governments, he maintained, were the best instruments for achieving this end. These were governments in which power was given by “the many, to a few of the most wise and good.” Adams proposed that the structure of government consist of a bicameral assembly that was to be balanced by executive and judicial branches. Like Paine, Adams understood that the legislature would be the focal point of the system. It was therefore essential that the assembly “be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large.… Great care should be taken” to see that the representatives of the people “feel, reason, and act like them.” Adams maintained that a two-house assembly was superior to a unicameral legislature, as bicameralism reduced the likelihood that legislation would be enacted in a fit of passion. Adams urged that the representatives in a small lower house be popularly elected by the qualified voters in each state, in elections conducted according to the “established modes to which the people have been familiarised by habit.” The lower house, in turn, would elect the members of the upper chamber, whose size should not exceed thirty members. The executive, who should be elected annually by both houses of the assembly, was to possess veto powers over bills passed by the legislature. Judges, he argued, should be appointed by the executive with the consent of the upper house of the assembly. They should hold office for life. Adams maintained that his formula would result in the “dignity and stability of government.” Moreover, because this structure was strong, sturdy, and popular, “THESE Colonies, under such forms of government, and in such a union, would be unconquerable by all the Monarchies of Europe.”66

  Nothing else that Adams ever wrote rivaled the impact of Thoughts on Government. Many of his previous publications had been overly long and dense. This one was crafted with a lovely clarity. Perhaps the literary quality was improved because Adams did not realize that what he wrote would be published. Or he may have been inspired to try to match Paine’s felicitous style. Neither he nor anyone else was Paine’s equal as a writer, yet Adams reached a large audience of articulate citizens and succeeded in easing many fears about America’s ability to govern itself. Some concerns remained. An independent America would be a huge nation—the settled portions of the thirteen provinces were several times larger than most European nations—and it was certain to be frayed by wildly dissimilar interests. But Adams’s essay was pivotal because it offered a rational formula for constructing a government that would be insulated from those “ambitious innovators” that so worried the most conservative colonists. Adams succeeded in convincing many Americans that they could live in an independent nation and still preserve what they chose to keep from their treasured colonial past.

  On May 5, ten days before the Virginia Convention called on Congress to declare independence, a vessel docked in Philadelphia loaded with thirteen tons of gunpowder and other war-related materials that had been taken aboard in Port l’Orient, France. The cargo was welcome, but the ship also brought a two-month-old issue of a Dublin newspaper that was filled with unwanted news. The North ministry, it disclosed, was dispatching forty-five thousand troops to America, among them German mercenaries.67

  Congress had known for months that the mother country might utilize mercenaries. The king had cryptically alluded to offers of foreign assistance in his October address to Parliament. Even before that, Americans had learned from accounts in the British press, including debates in Parliament, that North’s government was attempting to negotiate a treaty with Catherine the Great to obtain Russian soldiers. Rumors buzzed in Philadelphia just after Christmas that “a great Number of Foreign Troops are coming over.” One report claimed that thirty thousand Russians were already crossing the Atlantic. As Great Britain had frequently employed mercenaries to augment its own army during its wars with France and Spain, few were surprised that London would once again turn to this expedient. The ministers “must Certainly have recourse to Foreigners as they cannot meet success in” raising adequate numbers within Great Britain, Robert Morris responded rather matter-of-factly.68

  Americans learned in midwinter 1776 that North’s Russian diplomacy had failed. The csarina had declined to sell her soldiers to the British. No one in Congress thought that was the end of the story. Most believed the Crown would next try to hire German soldiers. That was precisely what it did. In February the British government concluded treaties with the rulers of four German principalities to lease twen
ty thousand soldiers. The opposition in Parliament had fought hiring foreign troops, calling such a step “disgraceful and dangerous.” When the government submitted the treaties for ratification in February, Isaac Barré charged that this was fresh proof that North and Germain were “not fit to conduct the affairs of a great nation.” David Hartley called it a “fatal measure,” for “when foreign powers are once introduced in this dispute, all possibility of reconciliation is totally cut off.” The treaties passed in the Commons by a three-to-one margin.69

  Congress may not have been surprised to learn in May that thousands of German troops had been hired, but nothing since word of the American Prohibitory Act so riled the delegates. For some, the news that the king planned to use foreigners to kill his American subjects was the final confirmation of the corruption and despotism that stalked the mother country. The “Tyrant of Britain and his Parliament,” said John Hancock, “have proceeded to the last Extremity.” Several congressmen described the use of mercenaries as “infamous,” but to hire German soldiers, who had a reputation as cruel and barbarous warriors, was unthinkable. Great Britain has “added near half of Germany” to its army, a North Carolina delegate raged, while a Yankee said that it meant London intended “to push the war with the utmost fury.” James Duane of New York, who had steadfastly been aligned with the reconciliationists, worried that the Germans would not leave even if they subdued the rebellion. “[L]ike all other Barbarians,” he fumed, they would remain to “set up their own Empire on the Ruins of Americans.” His compatriot from Pennsylvania, Robert Morris, was no longer so blasé. The “Dogs of Warr are now fairly set loose upon us,” he said, adding that the Germans “are coming to Slaughter us.” No one better captured the temper in Congress than New Hampshire’s Josiah Bartlett. George III, he charged, planned to use “Britons, Hessians, Hanoverians, Indians, negroes and every other butcher [he] can hire against us.”70