Independence

  Only two tracts written during the American Revolution, both penned by Thomas Paine, gained widespread traction with contemporaries. Common Sense, the first publication to openly denounce reconciliation and enumerate sound reasons for independence, was fresh and bold, and it electrified the public. In January 1777, in the midst of the despair that flowed from Washington’s humbling defeats in New York and his desperate retreat through New Jersey, Paine did it again with the initial essay in The American Crisis, a pamphlet that boosted the morale of the the shaken but hopeful Americans.

  It was not until the 1790s that the Declaration of Independence first began to be seen as what has been called America’s “holy writ” and “sacred text.” Speeches or documents that win immediate acclaim are sometimes prized by subsequent generations. That was true of the majestic inaugural addresses of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inspirational “I have a dream” speech. More frequently, that which is hailed by contemporaries fails the test of time, as was the case with General Douglas MacArthur’s “Old soldiers never die” speech in 1951, now a largely forgotten oration. It is extremely rare indeed for something that was initially largely ignored to be exalted by subsequent generations.

  Widespread appreciation of the Declaration of Independence initially became evident only when more than half the population was too young to have remembered 1776 or the bitter events leading to it. That, not coincidentally, occurred during the fierce party battles in the 1790s. The Republican Party, largely Jefferson’s creation, not only celebrated the Declaration; it also made sure that the public knew the identity of its author.

  Starting around 1815, leading Americans, fearful that the memory of the American Revolution was in danger of being lost as the Revolutionary generation passed from the scene, made a concerted effort to preserve as much as possible about America’s struggle for independence. Documents and recollections were published, and paintings of events during the Revolution were commissioned. John Trumbull, for instance, painted four scenes commemorating the American Revolution for the new capitol in Washington. His initial work depicted the Committee of Five presenting the draft Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress.39

  The striking coincidence of the deaths of Adams and Jefferson on July 4, 1826—the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—additionally helped to reacquaint that generation with the document and to preserve the memory of those two revolutionaries. For that time period, the great triumvirate of the American Revolution, as broadcast by countless orators, came to be Washington, the Revolution’s mighty “sword”; Adams, its resounding “tongue”; and Jefferson, its eloquent “pen.”40

  But it was not mere happenstance or politics that caused the Declaration of Independence to become America’s most treasured text. The Declaration’s content, and Jefferson’s felicitous composition, caused those who came after 1776 to embrace and sanctify it. Jefferson wrote about the threats faced by his generation, but he succeeded in penning a timeless message, an affirmation of human liberty and dignity that has captured the hopes of succeeding generations. In time, new generations emerged and faced their own battles against tyranny and injustice, whether the struggle was against slavery or racial oppression, or for the rights of workers or women. In the course of these crusades, people born long after 1776 discovered the Declaration of Independence’s ringing passages on equality and natural rights. As they drew sustenance from what Jefferson had said America stood for, the Declaration of Independence at last came to be a living document for Americans, a statement that embodied the national credo and gave an enduring meaning to the American Revolution.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AA

  Abigail Adams

  AFC

  L. H. Butterfield et al., eds. Adams Family Correspondence. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963–.

  Am Archives 4th series

  Peter Force, ed. American Archives. 4th series. 6 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1837–1846.

  Am Archives 5th series

  Peter Force, ed. American Archives, 5th series. 3 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1847–1853.

  BF

  Benjamin Franklin

  DAJA

  L. H. Butterfield et al., eds. The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams. 4 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961.

  DAR

  K. G. Davies, ed. Documents of the American Revolution. Dublin: Irish University Press, 1972–1981.

  DGW

  Donald Jackson et al., eds. The Diaries of George Washington. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976–1979.

  EHD

  David C. Douglas et al., eds. English Historical Documents. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) Ltd.; and New York: Oxford University Press, 1956–.

  GW

  George Washington

  JA

  John Adams

  JCC

  Worthington C. Ford et al., eds. The Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–89. 34 vols. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1904–1937.

  LDC

  Paul H. Smith et al., eds. Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–89. 29 vols. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976–2000.

  PBF

  Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959–.

  PGWC

  W. W. Abbot et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983–95.

  PGWR

  Philander Chase et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985–.

  PH

  T. C. Hansard, ed. The Parliamentary History of England … The Parliamentary Debates. London, 1806–20.

  PJA

  Robert J. Taylor et al., eds. Papers of John Adams. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977–.

  PTJ

  Julian P. Boyd et al., eds. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1950–.

  SA

  Samuel Adams

  TJ

  Thomas Jefferson

  WJA

  Charles Francis Adams, ed. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author. 10 vols. Boston, 1850–56.

  WSA

  Harry Alonzo Cushing, ed. The Writings of Samuel Adams. 4 vols. Reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1968.

  NOTES

  PREFACE

  1. TJ to Samuel Kercheval, July 13, 1816, quoted in R. B. Bernstein, The Founding Fathers Reconsidered (New York, 2009), 108.

  2. JA to AA, April 26, 1777, AFC 2:224.

  CHAPTER 1: “IN THE VERY MIDST OF A REVOLUTION”: THE PROPOSAL TO DECLARE INDEPENDENCE

  1. Journal of Lord Adam Gordon, in Howard H. Peckham, ed., Narratives of Colonial America 1704–1765 (Chicago, 1971), 259–61.

  2. Carl and Jessica Bridenbaugh, Rebels and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin (New York, 1962), 6–21; David Hawke, In the Midst of a Revolution (Philadelphia, 1961), 33–57.

  3. Charlene Mires, Independence Hall in American Memory (Philadelphia, 2002), 6–7.

  4. Robert Morris to Silas Deane, June 6, 1776, LDC 4:154; Secret Committee to William Hodge, May 30, 1776, ibid., 4:103.

  5. Secret Committee to Hodge, May 30, 1776, LDC 4:103; Marine Committee to Lambert Wickes, June 10, 1776, ibid., 4:184; Robert Livingston to John Jay, May 21, 1776, ibid., 4:59; JA to Isaac Smith Jr., January 1, 1776, ibid., 4:112; Joseph Hewes to William Tokeley, May 18, 1776, ibid., 4:35; JH to the Colonies, June 7, 1776, ibid., 4:156.

  6. David Hawke, A Transaction of Free Men: The Birth and Course of the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1964), 6.

  7. An officer in Halifax to his friend in Edinburgh, June 8, 1776, in William Bell Clark and William James Morgan, eds., Naval Documen
ts of the American Revolution (Washington, D.C., 1964–), 5:421–22; Major Charles Stuart to the Earl of Bute, June 10, 1776, ibid., 5:445.

  8. John Hancock to the Massachusetts Assembly, June 14, 1776, LDC 4:213; Thomas Stone to James Hollyday[?], May 20, 1776, ibid., 4:50; Josiah Bartlett to Mary Bartlett, June 3, 1776, ibid., 4:124; Commissioners to Canada to Hancock, May 17, 1776, ibid., 4:23; JA to Isaac Smith Sr., June 1, 1776, AFC 2:1–2.

  9. JCC 5:424–26.

  10. On Lee’s rise, see Oliver Perry Chitwood, Richard Henry Lee: Statesman of the Revolution (Morgantown, W.Va., 1967), 7–59, and J. Kent McGaughy, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Portrait of an American Revolutionary (Lanham, Md., 2004), 16–78. The “fasten chains of slavery” quotation can be found in McGaughy’s biography of Lee, page 78.

  11. McGaughy, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, 71–112.

  12. James T. Flexner, George Washington (Boston, 1965–72), 2:322.

  13. JA, Diary, August 29–September 5, October 10, 24, 1774, DAJA 2:114–24, 150, 156–57.

  14. Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, September 10–11, 1774, LDC 1:62; JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:308; McGaughy, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, 52.

  15. Richard Henry Lee, Draft Address to the People of Britain and Ireland, October 11–18[?], 1774, LDC 1:174–79; Silas Deane, Diary, May 23, 1775, ibid., 1:371; Lee to Landon Carter, April 1, June 2, 1776, ibid., 3:470, 4:117.

  16. Virginia’s Resolution for Independence, June 7, 1776, in Merrill Jensen, ed., American Colonial Documents to 1776, 9:867–68, in David C. Douglas, ed., English Historical Documents, 12 vols (London, 1956–70); JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:392.

  CHAPTER 2: “A SPIRIT OF RIOT AND REBELLION”: LORD NORTH, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, AND THE AMERICAN CRISIS

  1. Alan Valentine, Lord North (Norman, Okla., 1967), 1:3–189; Peter Whitley, Lord North: The Prime Minister Who Lost America (London, 1996), 1–84; Peter D. G. Thomas, Lord North (London, 1967), 3–18; Ian Christie, Wars and Revolutions: Britain, 1760–1815 (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 74. The description of North’s complexion can be found in Valentine, Lord North, 1:189.

  2. PH 16:719–20; Peter D. G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773–1776 (Oxford, 1991), 50.

  3. Valentine, Lord North, 237, 239, 339.

  4. Quoted in Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, 87.

  5. The foregoing draws on J. M. Bumstead, “ ‘Things in the Womb of Time’: Ideas of American Independence, 1633 to 1763,” William and Mary Quarterly 31 (1974): 533–64. On the notion that the Peace of Paris triggered a plot to seek independence, see Julie Flavell, “British Perceptions of New England and the Decision for a Coercive Colonial Policy, 1774–1775,” in Julie Flavell and Stephen Conway, eds., Britain and America Go to War: The Impact of War and Warfare in Anglo-America, 1754–1815 (Gainesville, Fla., 2004), 97.

  6. Benjamin Franklin, “Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c.” (1751), in PBF 4:229. See also Benjamin Franklin, “The Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to her Colonies” (1760), ibid., 9:59–100.

  7. The king’s comment can be found in Eliga H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 108. See also John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (New York, 2003), 25–29, and Benson Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution (New York, 1997), 61.

  8. Quoted in Fred Anderson, The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War (New York, 2005), 208.

  9. Jack P. Greene, “An Uneasy Connection: An Analysis of the Preconditions of the American Revolution,” in Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1973), 32–80. See also Keith Mason, “Britain and the Administration of the American Colonies,” in H. T. Dickinson, ed., Britain and the American Revolution (London, 1998), 21–43.

  10. Gould, Persistence of Empire, 113–14, 118. The quotation is on page 118.

  11. P. D. G. Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution, 1763–1767 (Oxford, 1975), 1–39; Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: The History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1967), 41.

  12. Richard Archer, As If an Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of the Revolution (New York, 2010), 3–7. The quotation can be found on page 7.

  13. Jensen, Founding of a Nation, 82–87.

  14. [Thomas Whately], The Regulations Lately Made Concerning the Colonies (1765), in Harry T. Dickinson, ed., British Pamphlets on the American Revolution, 1763–1785 (London, 2007), 1:115.

  15. Anon., The Justice and Necessity of Taxing the American Colonies Demonstrated (1766), ibid., 1:236–37.

  16. Quoted in Ferling, A Leap in the Dark, 31.

  17. Archer, As If an Enemy’s Country, 8–9.

  18. Benjamin L. Carp, Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (New York, 2007), 40–41, 81–82, 122, 152, 189–90; Ferling, A Leap in the Dark, 38–39; Jensen, Founding of a Nation, 113. For the JA quote, see JA, Diary, April 24, 1773, DAJA 2:81.

  19. Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 1–39; Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions (May 30, 1765), in Merrill Jensen, ed., American Colonial Documents to 1776, vol. 9, in David C. Douglas, ed., English Historical Documents. (London, 1956–70), 9:669–70; Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 59–62; Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 13–14. Wood demonstrates that the colonists were unaware that their interpretation of the English constitution differed from the prevailing view within the mother country.

  20. Jensen, Founding of a Nation, 193–97.

  21. JA, Diary, December 18, 1765, DAJA,1:263.

  22. JA to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818, WJA, 10:282.

  23. H. T. Dickinson, “Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty: The Ideological Case Against the American Colonists,” in Dickinson, Britain and the American Revolution, 64–96. See especially pages 66–67.

  24. Quoted in Benjamin Newcomb, Franklin and Galloway: A Political Partnership (New Haven, Conn., 1972), 11.

  25. James H. Hutson, Pennsylvania Politics, 1746–1770: The Movement for Royal Government and Its Consequences (Princeton, N.J., 1972), 6–121; Newcomb, Franklin and Galloway, 17–18, 37, 39. The quotation can be found in David Freeman Hawke, Franklin (New York, 1976), 157.

  26. On BF’s life and ascendancy prior to the imperial crisis, see Hawke, Franklin; J. A. Leo Lemay, The Life of Benjamin Franklin (3 vols., Philadelphia, 2006–9); H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2000); Esmond Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1938); Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn., 2002); Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York, 2003); and Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2004).

  27. BF to Galloway, October 11, 1766, PBF 12:48n; Brands, The First American, 361.

  28. BF to Richard Jackson, January 16, 1764, PBF 11:19, 13:127n.

  29. BF to Galloway, October 11, 1766, PBF 12:48n.

  30. Galloway to BF, July 18, 1765, PBF 12:218.

  31. John Hughes to BF, September 8–17, 1765, PBF 12:264–66.

  32. Deborah Franklin to BF, September 22, 1765, PBF 12:271; Samuel Wharton to BF, October 13, 1765, ibid., 12:315–16; Syddon Deed to Franklin’s Philadelphia Property, ibid., 283–86n; Brands, The First American, 368.

  33. Galloway to William Franklin, November 14, 1765, PBF 12:374.

  34. David Hall to BF, September 6, 1765, PBF 12:259.

  35. BF, “F.B.: Second Reply to Tom Hunt,” December 27, 1765, PBF 12:413.

  36. Stacy Schiff, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (New York, 2005), 21
, 89.

  37. The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin before an August Assembly …, February 13, 1766, PBF 13:129–59. The quotations can be found on pages 135, 136, 137, 139, and 143.

  38. Dickinson, “Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty,” in Dickinson, Britain and the American Revolution, 68.

  39. JA, Diary, November 11, 1766, DAJA 1:324.

  40. John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768), in Merrill Jensen, ed., Tracts of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (Indianapolis, Ind., 1967), 128–63. The quotation can be found on page 140.

  41. BF, “The English Edition of the Reader,” May 8, 1768, PBF 15:111–12, 110–11n.

  42. BF to Mary Stevenson, September 14, 1767, PBF 14:253.

  43. BF to [?], November 28, 1768, PBF 15:272.

  44. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin, 105–7, 111–12; Brands, The First American, 278–79, 341–42, 360, 394, 492; Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 83–91, 104, 131–33.

  45. Quoted in Brands, The First American, 401. See also Morgan, Benjamin Franklin, 170–71.

  46. BF to Lord Kames, February 25, 1767, PBF 14:69–70.

  47. BF, “A Horrid Spectacle to Men and Angels,” January 17, 1769, PBF 16:19; idem., “Purported Letter from Paris,” January 17, 1769, ibid., 16:20; idem., “An Account Stated Against GG,” January 17, 1769, ibid., 16:22–24.

  48. Quoted in Ian R. Christie and Benjamin W. Labaree, Empire or Independence, 1760–1777 (New York, 1976), 122, 123, 124.

  49. BF, “An Account Stated Against GG,” January 17, 1769, PBF 16:25.

  50. Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia, 199–200.

  51. BF to William Franklin, March 13, 1768, PBF 15:75–76.

  52. Wood, Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 120–24.

  53. BF to Galloway, January 9, 1769, PBF 16:17.