Independence

by John Ferling

  Jefferson also wrote a letter early on the morning of July 1, to an old college chum, William Fleming, a judge in Virginia. Unlike Adams, Jefferson dwelled almost exclusively on the worrisome military situation. He was troubled by the debacle in Canada and Howe’s imminent landing in New York, and he urged Fleming to play an active role “to keep up the spirits of the people” in Virginia in the face of news of further adversity, which he thought likely.4 Before leaving his apartment for the State House, Jefferson devoted some time to another committee assignment. He took notes on an interview with a Montreal merchant who had passed on word that most inhabitants of Canada hoped that the thirteen colonies achieved their goals in the war with Great Britain.5

  Other congressmen were writing home too. The war made New Hampshire’s Josiah Bartlett anxious. The setback in Canada and the imminent campaign in New York made Bartlett, long a supporter of independence, believe more than ever that the break with Great Britain could not be delayed. The moment had come to push the reconciliationists aside, close ranks behind the establishment of the United States, and seek foreign assistance. He thought, “we are now Come to the time that requires harmony, together with all the wisdom, prudence, Courage, & resolution we are masters of to ward off the Evils intended by our implacable Enemies.” It was time to save the “Grand American Cause.” North Carolina’s John Penn could not have agreed more. July 1, he told a friend at home, would go down in history as a “remarkable” day, as “Independence will be ajitated” and declared. He added that he prayed that “things may answer our expectations after we are Independent.”6 John Dickinson was also up early on the morning of July 1. He was about to make his last stand in the Continental Congress.

  The temperature on Jefferson’s thermometer had already climbed into the mid-eighties by nine A.M. It was going to be oppressively hot and humid, the sort of sticky summer day in Philadelphia that congressional veterans had come to dread. As usual, some delegates were at work well before Congress was gaveled to order. In the creeping light of early morning, John Adams left Sarah Yard’s stone boardinghouse at Walnut and Second, where he and all the other Massachusetts delegates had resided for the past year, and in all likelihood crossed the street to the City Tavern for breakfast with a handful of his colleagues. From there, he walked three blocks west to the State House, where sometime after eight he met with the Board of War. But at ten A.M. Adams and some forty-five fellow deputies were in the congressional chamber when John Hancock climbed the dais to start that day’s session.7

  Despite the air of anticipation that must have permeated the room, Congress first tended to its daily business. Numerous letters and papers from Generals Washington, Schuyler, Ward, Arnold, Sullivan, and Andrew Lewis—an old Indian fighter from Virginia who in March had been named a brigadier general—were read. Dispatches from two colonels who were with the army that had retreated from Canada were introduced, as was a report by the army’s paymaster in the Southern Department. Communications from the New Hampshire and New Jersey assemblies came next, followed by a reading of Maryland’s resolution—adopted the previous Friday—that freed its delegation to “concur with … a majority” of the other delegations “in declaring the United Colonies free and independent States.” Congress then voted to permit brigadier generals to have aides-de-camp. It was just about to proceed to the question of independence when another letter from Washington, written on Saturday, arrived and was read. The commander broke the news that the militia was slow to come in, adding that he hoped their tardiness would not cause “disagreeable circumstances” during his defense of New York.8

  Finally, the order of the day—the business that Congress had put on its schedule—was read: “Resolved, That this Congress will resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole, to take into consideration the Resolution respecting Independency.” After the resolution was adopted, the delegates, as they had done on many occasions when forming into a committee of the whole, chose Virginia’s Benjamin Harrison, highly thought of as a parliamentarian, to chair the session. Harrison, who was obese and six feet four inches tall—a Yankee described him as “uncommonly large”—shuffled to the dais to supplant Hancock. Once in his chair, Harrison turned to Charles Thomson, Congress’s secretary since the first day of the First Congress at Carpenters’ Hall, to reread Richard Henry Lee’s motion calling for independence. With that, the floor was open.9 It was no surprise that, at this critical juncture, Dickinson was the first delegate on his feet.

  Leaving nothing to chance, Dickinson had prepared his speech in advance, something he almost always did when he planned to deliver a major address. Dickinson knew that this would not only be an important speech but also his final oration in the Continental Congress. If independence was declared, he planned to resign his seat before Pennsylvania’s new legislature, under its new constitution, removed him from the state’s delegation, which it very likely would do.

  Dickinson had known for weeks that he had lost his fight against American independence. And he had lost much more. Once he had controlled the Pennsylvania assembly, having wrested the leadership from Galloway, but that body, a casualty of the American Revolution, had not met since June 14—and it would never meet again. Once, too, he had been the most revered public figure in his province, exalted above even Franklin. But Dickinson was now reviled by many. In June an editorial in Philadelphia’s most influential newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, denounced his “ruinous … reconciliation” policies, charging that since the war began, Dickinson had held “no fixed object in view than [advancing] HIMSELF.” Old provincial political allies had abandoned him and some friends had forsaken him. When the soldiers in three of Philadelphia’s four militia battalions voted nearly unanimously in June for independence, other general officers had wondered aloud how Dickinson could lead these men in battle. Some had bluntly told him that he had “lost the confidence and affections of the people.” Some urged him to resign his commission. As spring gave way to summer, acquaintances from other colonies implored Dickinson to support independence, which, they said, offered the best hope for a short war. Charles Thomson, related to Dickinson by marriage, tried in the last days of June to persuade his old friend and in-law to join the majority in Congress “for a declaration of independence.” Thomson reminded Dickinson that he had once pledged to support independence should Great Britain “employ foreign mercenaries to cut out throats.”10

  But Dickinson could not be swayed. He had waged desperate, courageous fights throughout his public career, and he had always been vindicated. He had contested Galloway and Franklin when they sought the royalization of Pennsylvania, and in time nearly every American had applauded the stance he had taken. At great risk he had led his colony in resisting Britain’s imperial policies, and in the process, he had helped his countrymen from New England to Georgia to see the dangers posed by Parliament. There had always been a stubborn streak in Dickinson. It was perhaps stronger than ever in 1776, as he must have felt that he had already burned his bridges. In all probability, he realized that he would never attain the lofty status in an independent America that he had enjoyed in colonial days. He may also have been driven by an obsessive and gnawing unwillingness to take a back seat to the likes of John Adams, a steadfast antagonist whom he despised. No one, and no line of reasoning, could persuade Dickinson to abandon reconciliation and support independence.

  It must have been close to noon when Dickinson began to speak. The sun was approaching its zenith, and outdoors the temperature had risen above ninety degrees. Congress’s chamber, with its windows shut to preserve privacy and some two score delegates crammed into the room, was a sweatbox. That did not deter Dickinson, who launched into the lengthy speech he had crafted.

  He began by mentioning the “Burthen assigned me,” possibly a hint that those in Congress who opposed independence had selected him to speak first. He could count heads, too, and he as much as conceded in the first minute or two that he was speaking on behalf of a lost cause. In a sense,
he said, he “rejoice[d]” that his fight was nearly over and that he would shortly “be relieved from its Weight.” What he said this day would win no friends, he admitted. Instead, it would “give the finishing Blow to my once too great, and [now] … too dimish’d Popularity.” But he felt compelled to say his piece. “Silence would be guilt.… I must speak, tho I should lose my Life, tho I should lose the Affections of my C[ountrymen].” There was at least one consolation: “Drawing Resentment [is] one proof of Virtue.”

  Dickinson opened his litany against independence with the assertion that Congress and the American people were “warm’d by Passion.” Their bitterness was fueled by a “Resentment” born of “injuries offered to their Country.” He did not deny that America had been wronged or that Americans were right to resist British tyranny. Nothing was more laudable than to die rather than to submit to a tyrant. Yet, reason screamed that independence was not in America’s long-term best interests. America would be better served by reconciliation with Great Britain on the fair and just terms that Congress had long since laid out.

  Dickinson next proceeded to enumerate the reasons for not declaring independence:

  a war for independence would last longer than a war for reconciliation; Britain would resist independence “with more severity;” far from increasing American morale, independence would diminish it; it was risky to declare independence before adopting a constitution; a long war would plunge America deeply into debt; the American union was unlikely to survive long after independence; an independent America might become a vassal of France; and a stalemated war might end in Europe’s partition of America.

  Dickinson had added nothing new. There was nothing new to be said. In a letter written ten days earlier John Adams had accurately inventoried the objections to independence that the reconciliationists could be expected to make. Still later, once this session was complete, Adams remarked that the day’s debate had been “an idle Mispence of Time for nothing was Said, but what had been repeated and hackneyed in that Room before an hundred Times for Six Months past.” (Another proponent of independence grumbled that all the arguments on both sides were “as well known at the Coffee House of the City as in Congress.”)11

  The speech had gone on and on, probably lasting past two o’clock. The congressional chamber had grown even more intolerably hot as Dickinson’s oration wound to a climax with a warning that the “Book of Fate” portended a “dreadful” future for an independent America.12

  Dickinson had hardly taken his seat before Adams was on his feet. He had not prepared a speech or even scribbled notes for his talk. They were not needed; he had made these same arguments many times. Adams may not have been Dickinson’s equal as an orator, for Dickinson was nearly as good as they came. But there was a studied expertise to Adams’s talents as a public speaker, honed before countless juries and in innumerable presentations in Congress. Jefferson once remembered that a typical Adams speech was composed of “deep conceptions, nervous style, and undaunted firmness.”13 On this day, in this speech, Adams summoned all his powers of oratory and delivered a superb address.

  No record of Adams’s speech has survived, but he must have answered each objection to independence that Dickinson had raised. If the speech resembled his correspondence of recent months—not to mention the compendium of London’s abominable behavior contained in Jefferson’s draft declaration—Adams probably described in detail the British policies and actions that had driven America to independence. There can be no question that Adams argued that the harsh realities of war left America no choice but to declare independence. Nor is it likely that he minimized the “Calamities” that America would confront during the long “bloody Conflict We are destined to endure,” as he remarked in a missive written just after that day’s session concluded.

  Whereas Dickinson had emphasized the potential dangers that independence might bring on, Adams almost certainly accentuated the benefits that would accrue from breaking with the mother country. Nothing had ever been more important to Adams than the opportunities for ambitious individuals. Above all, he believed that by escaping Great Britain’s fetters, talented Americans would have the chance to attain the highest reaches of political power. He knew, too, that independence would better provide the means by which Americans—individuals and powerful economic interests alike—might control their destiny. He may even have sounded somewhat like Thomas Paine, who had asserted that independence offered the promise of better things than could ever be hoped for by Anglo-Americans within the British Empire. “Freedom is a Counterballance for Poverty, Discord, and War, and more,” Adams wrote that night, and he likely expanded on that deep-seated conviction in his speech.14

  Adams’s speech was probably as long as, or longer than, Dickinson’s. As the afternoon wore on, the puffy white clouds of morning gave way to low, gray scudding clouds, then to angry black thunderheads. In time the thunder, at first distant and muted, grew steadily louder. An hour or so into Adams’s speech, Philadelphia grew very dark, as if night was approaching. Candles were lit. Soon, lightning was on top of the city and the thunder was as deafening as a nearby artillery barrage. For a minute or two, large drops of rain splattered loudly on the tall windows. Then, sheets of rain lashed the city.

  Adams and his listeners were not distracted. Adams paused only once, when the door to Congress’s chamber opened and four of the five newly chosen New Jersey delegates—all freshly authorized to vote for independence—entered. One of them, Richard Stockton, asked Adams to summarize what he had previously said. Adams obliged. Then he pushed forward. Finally, near Congress’s customary four P.M. adjournment time, Adams brought his speech to a conclusion. Perhaps no one could have answered Dickinson with a finer speech. Jefferson later said that Adams was the “pillar” in support of independence, “its ablest advocate and defender.” Stockton was enthralled with the “force of his reasoning” and subsequently called Adams “the Atlas of American independence.” A Southerner exclaimed that he “fancied an angel was let down from heaven to illumine Congress.”15

  Congress might as well have voted on independence when Adams sat down. Little could be added to what he and Dickinson had already said. But each delegate sensed that he was face-to-face with the pivotal moment of his public life. Nearly every member of Congress wanted to speak, to have the satisfaction of having said something on this historic occasion. Each must have hoped that what he said would be memorable. The thunderstorm had cooled the air. The room was now more bearable. One delegate after another took the floor. Jefferson later recalled that the entire debate had lasted for nine hours. Hour after hour “without a pause,” he said, the delegates spoke, many with such passion that they summoned all the “powers of the soul” in their calls for independence or their entreaties not to break with the mother country. Night was gathering over the city when the last speaker uttered the last word to an utterly spent and famished audience.16

  The time had come to vote on independence. Two votes were necessary. A vote was needed to favorably recommend the question from the committee of the whole. If that vote carried, Congress would then cast the decisive vote.

  Everyone expected the measure for independence to carry, but no one knew for certain by what margin. New York’s delegation, having not been instructed by the provincial authorities, would abstain. Most doubted that Delaware would cast a ballot. As Caesar Rodney was at home in Kent County, only two of the province’s three deputies were present and they differed in outlook. Thomas McKean was a clear-cut supporter of independence. George Read, a cautious forty-two-year-old lawyer, was not. Some of Read’s congressional colleagues had been whispering that he was “better fitted for the district of St. James’s [in England] than the [Delaware] region of America.”17 McKean and Read were expected to negate each other’s vote, so that Delaware would not cast a ballot on this crucial question.

  Most thought that Pennsylvania would vote against sending the question of independence to Congress for a vote. Among its seven d
elegates, only Franklin and John Morton, the speaker of the late provincial assembly, had never wavered on breaking with Great Britain. James Wilson was a question mark, but the four remaining congressmen—Willing, Morris, Dickinson, and Charles Humphreys, an archconservative who had been a follower of Galloway in the assembly after 1763—were seen as foes of independence. Most delegates also regarded South Carolina as a doubtful supporter of independence. Thomas Heyward—he pronounced his name “Haywood”—a thirty-year-old Charleston lawyer who had steadfastly supported cutting all ties with the mother country, was the sole member of South Carolina’s delegation who could be counted on by the proponents of independence. (“On him We could always depend for sound Measures, though he seldom spoke in public,” John Adams wrote many years later.)18 Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Lynch Jr. were not so much opposed to independence as to declaring it at this juncture. The best bet was that the measure would be voted out of committee by a margin of 10–1 or 9–2. Either margin would be short of the unanimous vote that most congressmen believed desirable for a step of such magnitude.

  It was nearly dark when the committee of the whole at last voted. The measure carried by a 9–2 vote. New York abstained. Delaware was deadlocked. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against the motion to send the question of independence from the committee of the whole to Congress for the historic vote.

  The balloting had gone more or less as most delegates expected. Once the vote was taken, a parliamentary practice was carried out. Harrison stepped down from the dais, and Hancock returned to the president’s chair. Harrison reported the outcome of the committee’s vote, whereupon Hancock asked whether Congress was ready for the formal vote on independence. Before anything could be done, Rutledge took the floor. He asked that the vote be postponed until the following morning. He told Congress that though “they disapproved of the resolution,” he believed at least two members of South Carolina’s delegation would join Heyward “for the sake of unanimity.”19 The weary and hungry congressmen happily agreed to Rutledge’s proposal and adjourned.