Independence

by John Ferling

  40. JA to Warren, June 20, 21, 27, July 6, 1775, PJA 3:34, 43, 50, 61; SA to Warren, June 28, 1775, LDC 1:553; Matthew Tilghman to Charles Carroll, June 20, 1775, ibid., 1:527.

  41. JA to Warren, June 27, July 6, 1775, PJA 3:50, 61; JA to Elbridge Gerry, [ante June 11], 1775, ibid., 3:23; JA to Joseph Palmer, July 5, 1775, ibid., 3:54; JA to William Tudor, July 6, 1775, ibid., 3:59–60; New Hampshire Delegates to Matthew Thornton, June 20, 1775, LDC 1:524.

  42. Commission from the Continental Congress, June 19, 1775, PGWR 1:6–7; Instructions from the Continental Congress, June 22, 1775, ibid., 1:21–22. On the Articles of War, see JCC 2:122–23 and PGWR 1:8n, 64n.

  43. JA to AA, June 23, 1775, AFC 1:226; Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography (New York, 1948–57), 3:458–59; James T. Flexner, George Washington and the American Revolution (Boston, 1967), 23.

  44. Deane to Elizabeth Deane, June 22, 26–27, 1775, LDC 1:532, 542; Connecticut Delegates to Jonathan Trumbull Sr., June 26, 1775, ibid., 1:542; JA to Warren, June 27, 1775, PJA 3:50; JA to AA, June 23, 1775, AFC 1:227.

  45. Samuel Blachley Webb to Joseph Webb, June 19, 1775, in Dennis P. Ryan, ed., A Salute to Courage: The American Revolution as Seen Through Wartime Writings of Officers of the Continental Army and Navy (New York, 1979), 7.

  46. Account of Adjutant Waller, June 23, 1775, in Samuel Adams Drake, ed., Bunker Hill: The Story Told in Letters from the Field by British Officers Engaged (Boston, 1875), 28, 29.

  47. Joyce Lee Malcolm, Peter’s War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 2009), 85.

  48. Howe [probably to the British adjutant general], June 22, 24, 1775, in Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’76: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants (Indianapolis, Ind., 1958), 1:132.

  49. Recollection of Robert Steele, in George H. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats (Cleveland, 1957), 59.

  50. The best account of the Battle of Bunker Hill is Richard M. Ketchum, Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill (New York, 1974). My narrative draws heavily on Ketchum. For succinct accounts, see also Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston (Boston, 1849), 133–206; Louis Birnbaum, Red Dawn at Lexington (Boston, 1986), 226–54; and Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 49–60.

  51. Howe is quoted in Maldwyn A. Jones, “Sir William Howe: Conventional Strategist,” in George A. Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents: British Generals and Admirals in the American Revolution (New York, 1969), 47. Clinton is quoted in Ketchum, Decisive Day, 183. Burgoyne’s comments are in John Burgoyne to Lord Stanley, June 25, 1775, Am Archives 4th series, 2:1095.

  52. Gage to Dartmouth, June 25, 1775, Am Archives 4th series, 2:1097.

  53. SA to Elizabeth Adams, June 28, 1775, LDC 1:552; Henry Middleton to Arthur Middleton, July 6, 1775, ibid., 1:595; TJ to George Gilmer, July 5, 1775, PTJ 1:185; BF to Shipley, July 7, 1775, PBF 22:94.

  54. Samuel Ward, Diary, June 1, 1775, LDC 1:431; Hancock to GW, June 28, 1775, ibid., 1:555; ibid., 1:430n; JA to Warren, June 7, 1775, PJA 3:17; Jack N. Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (Baltimore, Md., 1979), 78, 417.

  55. Dartmouth’s Circular Letter to the Governors, March 3, 1775, DAR 9:60–62.

  56. Am Archives 4th series, 2:454; Virginia’s Resolution on Lord North’s Conciliatory Proposal, June 10, 1775, PTJ 1:170–74; Marston, King and Congress, 207–9.

  57. Johnson to Horatio Gates, August 18, 1775, LDC 1:704; TJ, Draft Resolution on Lord North’s Conciliatory Proposal, July 25, 1775, PTJ 1:225–29; The Resolution as Adopted by Congress, July 31, 1775, ibid., 1:230–33.

  58. Draft Petition to the King, [June 3–19], 1775, LDC 1:440–41; Marston, King and Congress, 211–13; Rakove, Beginnings of National Politics, 73–79.

  59. JA to Warren, July 11, 1775, PJA 3:72.

  60. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:318.

  61. JA to Warren, July 24, 1775, PJA 3:89.

  62. For an excellent account of the publication of JA’s letter and its impact, see PJA 3:90–93n. See also Corner, Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, 142.

  63. John Dickinson’s Notes of Debates, May 23–25, 1775, LDC 1:390–91.

  64. JA to Warren, July 6, 1775, PJA 3:62.

  65. Dyer to Joseph Trumbull, July 10, 1775, LDC 1:620; JA, Diary, September 28, 1774, DAJA 2:140.

  66. JA to AA, June 17, 1775, AFC 1:216.

  67. JA to AA, July 7, October 7, 1775, AFC 1:241, 295; JA to Warren, July 6, 1775, PJA 3:61; JA to Josiah Quincy, October 6, 1775, ibid., 3:187; JA to Moses Gill, June 10, 1775, ibid., 3:21.

  68. Ward to Henry Ward, June 22, 1775, LDC 1:535; JA to Timothy Pickering, August 6, 1822, WJA 2:512.

  69. PTJ 1:188n.

  70. PTJ 1:189n.

  71. The Declaration on the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, July 6, 1775, PTJ 1:213–18. For TJ’s draft, see ibid., 1:193–98. For Dickinson’s draft, see ibid., 1:204–12. The PTJ contains an especially useful editorial note on the evolution of the final document. See ibid., 1:187–92. Finally, see JCC 2:128–57.

  72. JA to Tudor, July 6, 1775, PJA 3:59.

  CHAPTER 7: “THE KING WILL PRODUCE THE GRANDEST REVOLUTION”: GEORGE III AND THE AMERICAN REBELLION

  1. Troy Bickham, Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen Through the British Press (DeKalb, Ill., 2009), 72.

  2. Peter D. G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773–1776 (Oxford, 1991), 234; Fred Junkin Hinkhouse, The Preliminaries of the American Revolution as Seen in the English Press, 1763–1775 (reprint, New York, 1969), 185.

  3. Gage to Barrington, April 22, 1775, in Clarence E. Carter, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775 (reprint, New York, 1969), 2:674; Gage to Dartmouth, April 22, 1775, ibid., 1:396.

  4. Cadwallader Colden to Dartmouth, May 3, 1775, DAR 7:317.

  5. Gage to Dartmouth, October 20, 1775, in Carter, Correspondence of General Thomas Gage, 1:416. Sandwich is quoted in Alan Valentine, Lord North (Norman, Okla., 1967), 1:368. Gibbon is quoted in Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 38. The secretary at war and the army’s adjutant general expressed reservations about the ability of the British army to win the war without considerable naval assistance, with the latter remarking that “attempting to Conquer A[merica] Internally by our L[an]d Force, is as wild an Idea, as ever controverted Comn. Sense.” The quote can be found in Stephen Conway, “British Governments and the Conduct of the American War,” in H. T. Dickinson, ed., Britain and the American Revolution (London, 1998), 159.

  6. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, 238–41; B. D. Bargar, Lord Dartmouth and the American Revolution (Columbia, S.C., 1965), 170; Dartmouth to Governor Earl of Dunmore, July 5, 1775, DAR 10:24; Dartmouth to Carleton, July 24, 1775, ibid., 10:42; Dartmouth to Guy Johnson, July 24, 1775, ibid., 11:56.

  7. Louis Birnbaum, Red Dawn at Lexington (Boston, 1986), 273–74; Joseph Reed to James Otis Sr., August 14, 1775, PGWR 1:307n; Hancock to GW, June 28, 1775, ibid., 1:42–43; GW to Schuyler, August 20, 1775, ibid., 1:332. In October 1775 General Washington finally spurned the offer of the Stockbridge Indians to provide service, telling them that “they would be called when wanted.” See Committee of Conference Minutes of Proceedings, October 23–24, 1775, LDC 2:236.

  8. Mackesy, War for America, 524–25; Edward E. Curtis, The Organization of the British Army in the American Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 1926), 3.

  9. Quoted in Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, 254.

  10. North to George III, July 26, 1775, in Sir John Fortescue, ed., The Correspondence of George III from 1760 to December 1783 (London, 1927–28), 3:234; Valentine, Lord North, 376–77.

  11. Valentine, Lord North, 378–79.

  12. Stephen Conway, The War of American Independence, 1775–1783 (London, 1995), 44.

  13. Thomas, Te
a Party to Independence, 254–56.

  14. Carleton to Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, DAR 9:157–59.

  15. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, 259–65.

  16. Gage to Barrington, July 18, September 25, November 2, 15, December 14, 1774, in Carter, Correspondence of General Thomas Gage, 2:649, 654, 659, 661, 663.

  17. Dartmouth to Gage, August 2, 1775, in Carter, Correspondence of General Thomas Gage, 1:203.

  18. Bargar, Lord Dartmouth and the American Revolution, 176–81; Valentine, Lord North, 1:389–95, 407–8. The quote can be found in Valentine’s biography of North, page 395.

  19. Mackesy, War for America, 50.

  20. Alan Valentine, Lord George Germain (Oxford, 1962), 1–94; Gerald Saxon Brown, The American Secretary: The Colonial Policy of Lord George Germain, 1775–1778 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1963), 1–25; PH 17:1196, 1312.

  21. PH 17:1162, 1196, 1312–13.

  22. PH 18:990; Brown, American Secretary, 25–30; Valentine, Lord George Germain, 93–100.

  23. Valentine, Lord George Germain, 96; Valentine, Lord North, 1:403.

  24. George III to North, July 5, 26, 1775, in Fortescue, Correspondence of George III, 3:233, 235.

  25. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, 260–63; Jeremy Black, George III: America’s Last King (New Haven, Conn., 2006), 215–22.

  26. Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition, August 23, 1775, EHD 9:850–51.

  27. Gage to Dartmouth, August 20, 1775, in Carter, Correspondence of General Thomas Gage, 1:413–14; Dartmouth to Howe, September 5, 1775, DAR 11:99, 100. The Germain quote can be found in Ira D. Gruber, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution (New York, 1972), 27.

  28. Quoted in Allen French, The First Year of the American Revolution (Boston, 1934), 323–24.

  29. David McCullough, 1776 (New York, 2005), 3–10.

  30. The King’s Speech to Parliament, October 26, 1775, EHD 9:851–52.

  31. Roger Sherman to William Williams, July 28, 1775, LDC 1:675; Dyer to Joseph Trumbull, July 28, 1775, ibid., 1:674; Connecticut Delegates to Jonathan Trumbull Sr., July 28, 1775, ibid., 1:672.

  32. Jack N. Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (Baltimore, Md., 1979), 79.

  33. PJA 3:9n, 117–18n; BF to Schuyler, August 8, 10, 1775, PBF 22:159, 160; New York Provincial Congress to Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, August 16, 19, 1775, ibid., 22:172, 177; BF to Deane, August 27, 1775, ibid., 22:184; BF to Hartley, September 12, 1775, ibid., 22:196; Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (Boston, 1948–81), 1:208–9; Duane to Schuyler, August 4, 1775, LDC 1:696; Duane to Jonathan Trumbull, August 4, 1775, ibid., 1:697; Deane to Schuyler, August 20, 1775, ibid., 1:704; Chase to Schuyler, August 10, 1775, ibid., 1:700; Ward to BF, August 12, 1775, ibid., 1:701.

  34. JA to Warren, September 17, 1775, PJA 3:158–59; SA to Gerry, September 26, 1775, ibid., 3:160n.

  35. Richard Smith, Diary, September 12, 18, 21, 23, 1775, LDC 2:5, 29, 42, 48; Samuel Ward, Diary, September 15, 18, 20, 21, 1775, ibid., 2:29, 39, 42; JA, Diary, September 21, 22, 24, 1775, DAJA 2:177, 178–79, 184.

  36. William Hooper to Samuel Johnson, May 23, 1775, LDC 1:398.

  37. JA, Diary, September 16, 1775, DAJA 2:173.

  38. Harrison to GW, July 21, 1775, PGWR 1:145.

  39. JA to AA, December 3, 1775, AFC 1:332. Joseph Hewes to Samuel Johnston, December 1, 1775, LDC 2:421. On JA’s relations with Cushing and Paine, see AFC 1:333n.

  40. Deane to Elizabeth Deane, October 7, 1775, LDC 2:138; Josiah Bartlett to Mary Bartlett, October 25, 1775, ibid., 2:252; Ward to Deborah Ward, November 1, 1775, ibid., 2:285; Duane to Cornelius Duane, December 9, 1775, ibid., 2:464; BF to Shipley, September 13, 1775, PBF 22:200.

  41. BF to Hartley, October 3, 1775, PBF 22:216–17; BF to William Strahan, October 3, 1775, ibid., 22:219; BF to Joseph Priestley, October 3, 1775, ibid., 22:218; BF to a Friend in London, October 3, 1775, ibid., 22:215–16.

  42. Bartlett to Mary Bartlett, November 6, 1775, LDC 2:306–7; Ward to Mary Ward, October 19, 1775, ibid., 2:211; SA to Elizabeth Adams, November 7, 1775, ibid., 2:313.

  43. Ward to Deborah Ward, October 12, November 1, 1775, LDC 2:172, 283–84; JA to AA, July 16, 1776, AFC 2:50; John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (reprint, New York, 2010), 175.

  44. Francis Lewis to John Alsop, November 19, 1775, LDC 2:361; Jay to Sarah Jay, December 23, 1775, ibid., 2:514.

  45. GW to Hancock, September 21, 1775, PGWR 2:26. With his letter to Congress, GW enclosed a petition from the subalterns concerning a pay increase. See Committee of Second Lieutenants to GW, September 21, 1775, ibid., 2:32–33.

  46. Jerrilyn Greene Marston, King and Congress: The Transfer of Political Legitimacy, 1774–1776 (Princeton, N.J., 1987), 158–64.

  47. GW to Hancock, September 21, 1775, PGWR 2:26.

  48. JA to Warren, October 1, 1775, PJA 3:177.

  49. Ward to Henry Ward, September 30, 1775, LDC 2:84.

  50. See the helpful pay table in Marston, King and Congress, 160–61.

  51. Committee of Conference Minutes of Proceedings, October 23–24, 1775, LDC 2:233–38.

  52. Ward to Henry Ward, November 21, 1775, LDC 2:370; GW to Joseph Reed, November 28, 1775, PGWR 2:449; GW to Hancock, December 18, 1775, ibid., 2:574; John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York, 2007), 78–80; John Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon (New York, 2009), 97–98; Charles Lesser, The Sinews of Independence: Monthly Strength Reports of the Continental Army (Chicago, 1976), 8.

  53. Hancock to Massachusetts Assembly, December 2, 1775, LDC 2:422; Hancock to Jonathan Trumbull, December 2, 1775, ibid., 2:423; Samuel Ward, Diary, October 9, 12, 1775, ibid., 155, 172; Ward to Henry Ward, December 2, 14, 1775, ibid., 2:429, 487; JCC 3:340, 393, 408, 448; GW to Hancock, December 4, 18, 25, 31, 1775, PGWR 2:484–85, 574, 602, 625; GW to Massachusetts Council, January 10, 1776, ibid., 3:61; GW to Reed, January 4, 14, 1776, ibid., 3:24, 89; Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington (New York, 1948–57), 3:579; Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 80, 193. Samuel Adams is quoted in James T. Flexner, George Washington: The Forge of Experience, 1732–1775 (Boston, 1965), 67. John Adams is quoted in Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789 (New York, 1971), 390.

  54. JA, Diary, “Notes of Debates,” October 3, [4], 1775, DAJA 2:189–92.

  55. JA, Diary, “Notes of Debates,” October 5, 1775, DAJA 2:193.

  56. JA, Diary, “Notes of Debates,” October 5, 12, 1775, DAJA 2:194, 204–5.

  57. JCC 3:308; Jay to Alexander McDougall, October 26, 1775, LDC 2:258; JA, Diary, “Notes of Debate,” October 27, 1775, DAJA 2:219.

  58. JCC 3:274–75; JA, Diary, “Notes of Debates,” October 7, 12, 1775, DAJA 2:198–202, 205; JA to Warren, October 19, 1775, PJA 3:215; David Freeman Hawke, Honorable Treason: The Declaration of Independence and the Men Who Signed It (New York, 1976), 78.

  59. Marston, King and Congress, 173–74; JA, Diary, October 12, 1775, DAJA 2:205; JA to Warren, October 13, 19, 1775, PJA 3:205, 215; Silas Deane’s Proposals for Establishing a Navy, [October 16?, 1775], LDC 2:182–87. The Deane quotation is on page 184.

  60. JA, Diary, October 21, 1775, DAJA 2:214–15.

  61. JA, Diary, October 21, 1775, DAJA 2:215–17.

  62. David Syrett, The Royal Navy in American Waters, 1775–1783 (Aldershot, England, 1989), 7–8.

  63. BF to Richard Bache, October 24, 1775, PBF 22:242–43.

  64. GW to Hancock, October 24, 1775, PGWR 2:227; SA to Elizabeth Adams, November 7, 1775, LDC 2:313; Marston, King and Congress, 176–77; Nathan Miller, Sea of Glory: The Continental Navy Fight for Independence, 1775–1783 (New York, 1974), 52–55; William M. Fowler Jr., Rebels Under Sail: The American Navy During the American Revolution (New York, 1976), 42–72.

  65. Governor Sir James Wright to Dunmore, July 8, October 14, 1775, DAR 11:43, 145; John W. Gordon, S
outh Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History (Columbia, S.C., 2003), 15–36; Hugh T. Lefler and William S. Powell, Colonial North Carolina: A History (New York, 1973), 269–77.

  66. Dunmore to Dartmouth, June 25, 1775, DAR 9:203; John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (Williamsburg, Va., 1988), 14–15, 41–64; Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1968), 644–45; Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007), 52–53, 55, 61, 65, 118, 133–34, 135–74.

  67. GW to Richard Henry Lee, December 26, 1775, PGWR 2:611; Francis Lightfoot Lee to Landon Carter, February 12, 1776, LDC 3:237; Thomas Nelson to Mann Page, January 4, 1776, ibid., 3:30; William Hooper to Joseph Hewes and John Penn, February 6, 1776, ibid., 3:208; North Carolina Delegation to North Carolina Council of Safety, February 13, 1776, ibid., 3:250; Edward Rutledge to Ralph Izard, December 8, 1775, ibid., 2:462.

  68. Ward to Deborah Ward, November 1, 1775, LDC 2:285–86; Ward to Henry Ward, November 2, 1775, ibid., 2:291; SA to Warren, November 4, 1775, ibid., 298.

  69. JA to Warren, June 27, 1775, PJA 3:49, 50; JA to Joseph Palmer, [July] 5, 1775, ibid., 3:54; JCC 2:76–77, 83–84; Samuel Ward, Diary, June 9, 1775, LDC 1:463–64; Cushing to Gerry, June 10, 1775, ibid., 2:469; Hancock to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, ibid., 2:472–73.

  70. New Hampshire Delegates to Matthew Thornton, October 2, 1775, LDC 2:98–99; Samuel Ward, Diary, October 18, 1775, ibid., 2:200–201; JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:354–55.

  71. JCC 3:319, 326; New Hampshire Delegates to Thornton, November 3, 1775, LDC 2:292–93; SA to Warren, November 4, 1775, ibid., 2:298. On the issue of establishing provincial governments, see Jensen, Founding of a Nation, 620–28, 638–41, and Marsten, King and Congress, 256–73.

  72. Milton E. Flower, John Dickinson: Conservative Revolutionary (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 138–41.

  73. Flower, John Dickinson, 141–42; Am Archives 4th series, 3:1792–93; John Dickinson’s Proposed Instructions, November 9, 1775, LDC 2:319–20.