Independence

by John Ferling

  American independence would be declared on July 2, that much was certain. John Adams thought the vote would be “by a great Majority,” probably by a margin of “almost Unanimity,” a remark that suggests he expected Pennsylvania to cast a negative vote. Despite Rutledge’s assurances, Adams could not be sure how the South Carolina delegation would vote. There was another matter to worry over. The vote had been close in a couple of delegations, close enough to cause Adams to fret that arms might be twisted overnight, or deals struck, that could lead “one or two Gentlemen” to make a turnabout and “vote point blank against the known and declared Sense of their Constituents.”20

  It was still raining in Philadelphia, though more softly, when the delegates awakened on Tuesday morning. They hurried to the State House, splashing through the puddles on the city sidewalks. All delegates were in place when the session was called to order. Congress first listened to and discussed letters from Washington, the Massachusetts assembly, the governor of Connecticut, and the army’s paymaster.21 Though politicians tend to be talkative, it is not likely that the discussion occasioned by these dispatches consumed much time. Most congressmen were probably anxious to resume consideration of independence and, finally, to cast their vote on what must have seemed to them to have been the climax of a trajectory begun long ago.

  It was going on eleven A.M. when Congress returned to the recommendation of the committee of the whole that independence be declared. Lee’s resolution, which by now must have been committed to memory by many deputies, was read yet again. It is unlikely that any speeches were made. Congress was ready to vote.

  Secretary Thomson prepared to call the roll of the colonies. It would be the last time the provinces would be called “colonies.” The moment this vote was completed, the provinces would be transformed from British colonies into American states.

  All knew the measure would carry. Even so, an air of suspense, perhaps apprehension, swathed the chamber. Some worried that this most crucial of decisions would carry by a margin that was disappointingly short of unanimity. Even more, each delegate understood that if America lost the war, the members of a Congress that had declared American independence—a rogue assembly from the start, in Parliament’s eyes—would be marked men.

  Secretary Thomson may have called the roll in alphabetical order, beginning with Connecticut. Wolcott had gone home, but his two colleagues, Sherman and Samuel Huntington, voted for independence. There had never been any doubt about Huntington’s support for cutting ties with the mother country. A forty-five-year-old lawyer from Norwich who had entered Congress in January, he and William Ellery of Rhode Island were the only delegates who had been active members of a Sons of Liberty chapter.

  Delaware may have been next. To the astonishment of some delegates, Delaware’s delegation had swelled to three members. Caesar Rodney, who had not attended a session of Congress for nearly four weeks, had joined his colleagues Read and McKean. Delaware would not be deadlocked on this day. It would cast a vote.

  Few matters in the history of the Continental Congress were the subject of as many legends as those that surrounded Rodney’s activities in the weeks prior to July 2. Some yarns had him confined at home in Delaware by sickness—in the popular 1960s musical 1776, Rodney was depicted as suffering a stroke on the floor of Congress early in June—and others placed him at the bedside of his seriously ill wife, an especially fanciful story as Rodney was a lifelong bachelor.22 The one thing that the tales agreed on was that in order to be present and cast his historic ballot, Rodney had made a stupendous horseback ride through the dark, rainy night, his mount galloping sixty miles—eighty in some versions—in about twelve hours, which brought him to the Pennsylvania State House just in the nick of time.

  Rodney was a forty-eight-year-old veteran politician who had supported the American protest since its inception. John Adams thought him a man of “Sense and Fire, Spirit, Wit and Humour,” though he was “the oddest looking Man in the World. He is tall—thin and Slender as a Reed—pale—his Face is not bigger than a large Apple.” Adams did not mention that Rodney suffered from advanced skin cancer, which had ravaged his nose and spread to one cheek, leading him at times to wear a silk covering to hide the disfiguration.

  Statue of Caesar Rodney by James Kelley in Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware. Rodney’s vote on July 2, 1776, broke a tie in Delaware’s delegation, enabling the state to vote for independence. At home leading the militia against armed Loyalists, Rodney returned to Congress only an hour or two prior to the historic vote. (Historical Society of Delaware)

  Rodney embraced independence in the spring of 1776, declaring that it was absurd to “Swear Allegiance to the power that is Cutting our throats.”23 Soon thereafter, he left Philadelphia for New Castle to campaign to have the provincial assembly authorize its congressional delegation to vote for independence. As he was a high-ranking militia officer, Rodney stayed on in Delaware to help suppress a Loyalist uprising.24

  His colleague Thomas McKean subsequently recalled that after he and Read deadlocked in their vote on July 1, he sent a messenger to fetch Rodney back to Philadelphia by ten the following morning. McKean’s memory must have been faulty. It stretches credulity to imagine that within fourteen hours a courier could have ridden sixty or more miles, searched for and found Rodney, after which Rodney could have made his own ride to Philadelphia.

  It is more likely that McKean, knowing that Congress was scheduled to vote on independence on July 1 and that he and Read would cancel each other’s vote, sent an express rider sometime in late June to retrieve Rodney. Detained by his military activities, Rodney may not have started his ride until June 30, or possibly sometime on July 1, but that he arrived at the State House well before Congress voted seems certain. McKean recalled that on the morning of July 2 he met Rodney “at the State-house door in his boots and spurs, as the members were assembling.”25 Thus, Rodney was present when Thomson called on Delaware for its vote, and to no one’s surprise he joined with McKean. Delaware, like Connecticut, cast its vote for independence.

  Georgia was probably next in the roll call. Only three of Georgia’s five delegates were in Philadelphia. One, Lyman Hall, was a native of Connecticut who had moved to Georgia in 1758 after being ousted from the clergy for immoral conduct. Once in Georgia, he became a physician. Hall was disliked by many of fellow Georgia congressmen because he always seemed to vote the way a majority of the Connecticut delegation voted.26 On July 2 all three Georgians—Hall; Button Gwinnett, a planter-businessman who lived on St. Catherine’s, a ten-mile-long island that he owned off the Georgia coast; and George Walton, a Savannah lawyer who hated both of his colleagues—voted for independence.

  Maryland may have followed. Maryland’s three deputies who were in Philadelphia had learned only twenty-four hours earlier that they could vote for independence. One, John Rogers, declined to cast such a vote. His colleagues, William Paca and Thomas Stone, both Annapolis lawyers, had supported the American protest and the war from the beginning, but with considerable reluctance. Each preferred reconciliation, but at the last minute—in some measure because no peace commissioners had arrived from London—each voted for independence.27

  There was never any question how Massachusetts would vote. Each of its five congressmen—John and Samuel Adams, Hancock, Gerry, and Paine—voted for independence.

  The New Hampshire delegation, which was likely polled next, consisted of two members. Josiah Bartlett, a Kingston physician who had married his cousin, had been a congressman for ten months. His colleague, William Whipple, a Portsmouth merchant who on occasion went to sea, had come to Philadelphia in February. It was hardly a surprise that men whom John Adams regarded as “excellent … in Principle and Disposition, as well as Understanding,” voted for independence.28

  New Jersey probably followed. Four of New Jersey’s delegates had arrived the day before, during Adams’s long speech, joining Francis Hopkinson, who had entered Congress the preceding Friday and for two d
ays had been the colony’s lone representative. All five voted for independence. For the four newest of the newcomers—Abraham Clark, John Hart, Richard Stockton, and John Witherspoon—their votes on independence (in the committee of the whole and on July 2) were probably the very first votes they cast as members of Congress.

  When New York was polled, one of its seven, possibly eight, members—no record exists of who it was—rose and spoke on behalf of the province. He told the members of Congress that “the delegates for New York … were for it [independence] themselves, & were assured their constituents were for it, but that their instructions having been drawn near a twelvemonth before [on April 22, 1775], when reconciliation was still the general object, they were enjoined … to do nothing which should impede that object. they therefore thought themselves not justifiable in voting on either side.”29 With that explanation, New York abstained, as everyone knew it would.

  Two of North Carolina’s three congressmen were in Philadelphia on July 2. Joseph Hewes, a forty-six-year-old businessman, had been a delegate since about a week after the First Congress convened. He never questioned the war, but until the spring of 1776 he had favored reconciliation. Jefferson once characterized him as “sometimes firm, sometimes feeble, according as the day was clear or cloudy.” Another delegate recalled that when word arrived in Philadelphia that a majority of North Carolinians favored independence, Hewes “started suddenly upright, and lifting up both his Hands to Heaven as if he had been in a trance, cry’d out ‘It is done! and I will abide by it.’ ”30 His colleague John Penn, a thirty-six-year-old lawyer, had come to Congress the previous October and shared Hewes’s outlook. Both North Carolinians voted for independence.

  Most deputies came to the State House on July 2 expecting Pennsylvania to vote against independence. But Pennsylvania sprang two surprises. Startlingly, Dickinson and Robert Morris withdrew “behind the bar,” as one congressman put it, which is to say that overnight they had decided to vote neither for nor against independence, but to abstain.31 It was a breathtaking moment, perhaps the least-expected happening to this point in the history of the Continental Congress.

  Three weeks later Morris explained his action to a friend. He had never wavered, he said, in his conviction that a restoration of the Anglo-American union was in the best “interest of our Country and the Good of Mankind.” But there were those in Congress who thought reconciliation was “high Treason against the States.” Such men, he bristled, hated the reconciliationists. They “wou’d sooner punish a Man for this Crime than for bearing arms against us.” He could not bring himself to vote for independence, he continued, but he thought it best not to vote against it. Rather, he would bide his time, awaiting the arrival of the Howe brothers, Lord North’s peace commissioners. If they offered good terms, he would continue to support reconciliation. On the other hand, if “no good can possibly arise” from talking with them, Morris promised to declare in favor of independence.32

  Dickinson never offered an explanation for his abstention. Many delegates emphasized the need for American unanimity and the responsibility of congressmen to reflect the wishes of their constituents, and either or both may have provoked his decision. A cynic might argue that Dickinson, who remained politically ambitious and enjoyed the taste of power, was merely seeking to avoid the total ruin of his political career.

  With great suddenness, everyone in the chamber realized that Pennsylvania’s swing vote was in the hands of James Wilson. Willing and Humphreys would vote against independence. Franklin, though still weak from his June bout with the gout, had returned to Congress the previous day. There was no question how he would vote. Nor was there any doubt that his colleague, John Morton, would join with him in voting for independence. Morton, a fifty-two-year-old surveyor, former sheriff, and judge—though devoid of legal training—had little formal education and spoke, as did most Quakers, in sentences sprinkled with “thee” and “thou.” He had sat in Congress from day one in 1774, though he was quiet and never a leader. Once he became convinced early in 1776 that independence was inevitable, Morton never wavered in his support of breaking with Great Britain. With the Pennsylvania delegation divided two against two, the deciding vote would be left to Wilson. Little in his record as a congressman pointed toward an affirmative vote, but Wilson was clearly aware which way the political wind was blowing.

  In January, Wilson had led the fight to have Congress renounce American independence. In the spring, when Congress first debated independence in earnest, he had been an unwavering foe of breaking with the mother country. At the time, Wilson told his colleagues that he wished to hold in abeyance his decision on independence until he learned the outcome of Pennsylvania’s May 1 elections. Some colleagues thought him canny and dishonest, a judgment that increased in May and June. Although the electoral results left little doubt that most Pennsylvanians favored independence, Wilson fought against the May 15 resolution of Congress that aimed at securing new instructions for Pennsylvania’s delegates. His argument struck many as disingenuous. Perhaps he could support independence, he said, but not until the Pennsylvania assembly authorized such a vote; on the other hand, he was opposed to Congress’s attempt to force the assembly to authorize independence. Three weeks later, in the debates on June 8 and 10, he spoke against Lee’s resolution calling on Congress to declare independence.

  In June, Wilson’s steadfast opposition to independence aroused “violent spirits” against him within Pennsylvania, as a friend put it. Wilson was openly vilified by pro-independence forces, including in his home county, which had fallen under the control of radical militiamen and democrats. Wilson’s domestic enemies campaigned to force him to alter his stance. Some would have been happier to see him removed from Congress. Foes published records revealing Wilson’s record of duplicity: In public, he had postured as open-minded on the question of independence; in Congress’s secret sessions, he had done everything possible to prevent a final break with Great Britain. One report alleged that an unidentified congressman had confided to the revolutionary authorities in Carlisle that after dealing with Wilson, he would “never trust a Scotchman again. They Cannot be honest when liberty is in question.”33

  With his political career in jeopardy, Wilson in early June had taken the extraordinary step of asking his colleagues in Congress to “testifie” about his “behavior during the Debate on Independence” and “clear his Character” with the citizens of Pennsylvania. Congress had never done anything of the sort, and it initially refused to help Wilson. But on June 20, leading figures in the pro-independence faction in Congress came to his rescue. In a statement signed by all but two of the twelve congressmen from Virginia and Massachusetts, and six others who would vote for independence, Wilson was portrayed as having been an “un-restrained” advocate of independence who merely wished to postpone a vote until unanimity could be assured. John and Samuel Adams, Jefferson, and Francis Lightfoot Lee knew that the statement they were signing was balderdash. Theirs was a purely political move. They were throwing the embattled Wilson a lifeline to help him in Pennsylvania’s domestic political brawling; he, in turn, would vote for independence when the issue came to the floor within the next couple of weeks.34

  On July 2, the time had come for Wilson to cast his vote. Whatever he thought about breaking with Britain, Wilson had made his decision in mid-June when he solicited the aid of his pro-independence colleagues. The ambitious Wilson feared that unless he voted for independence, he had no future in politics. When the roll was called, he cast his vote with that of Franklin and Morton. By a three-to-two margin, Pennsylvania voted for independence.

  Rhode Island’s vote was never in question. Stephen Hopkins—at sixty-nine, one of the oldest congressmen—had long championed reconciliation, even voting for Galloway’s plan at the First Congress. Something of a professional politician, he changed colors once it was clear that Rhode Islanders favored independence. Hopkins was liked by all, including John Adams, who thought him a man of “Wit, Sens
e, Knowledge, and good humour” and marveled at Hopkins’s habit of drinking rum and water until midnight nearly every evening with any and all colleagues who would join him for a conversation on history, science, poetry, or politics.35 William Ellery, a forty-eight-year-old Newport lawyer and Harvard graduate, had been in Congress only six weeks. Thought by some to be slow and lazy, he seldom spoke in Congress, but when he did, there was no question that he favored independence. Hopkins and Ellery put Rhode Island in the pro-independence column.

  South Carolina was the last question mark with regard to unanimity. Its ballot the night before indicated an opposition to independence, but Rutledge had hinted that the delegation’s vote might change overnight. An air of mystery pervades the delegates’ behavior. Why would the South Carolina delegates who opposed independence on July 1 reverse themselves on July 2? Most likely, they wanted a deal. Jefferson’s draft declaration had been available since Friday, and South Carolina’s delegates were not happy with the antislavery tone of one of the indictments against the king. After casting a negative vote on the evening of July 1, the South Carolinians must have sought, and received, assurances that what they found offensive in the Declaration of Independence would be toned down or dropped altogether.