Independence

  24. John Munroe, Colonial Delaware (Millwood, N.Y., 1978), 249–50.

  25. Rodney to Rodney, July 4, 1776, LDC 4:388; Thomas McKean to Caesar A. Rodney, September 22, 1813, ibid., 4:388n.

  26. Hawke, Honorable Treason, 106.

  27. Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1968), 383–84, 655–56.

  28. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:360.

  29. Jefferson, Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, [June 7–August 1, 1776], PTJ 1:314.

  30. Quoted in Hawke, Transaction of Free Men, 137.

  31. Flower, John Dickinson, 166.

  32. Morris to Joseph Reed, July 21, 1776, LDC 4:510–11.

  33. Charles Page Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742–1798 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1956), 78–84; LDC 4:273–74n.

  34. Delegates’ Certification of James Wilson’s Conduct in Congress, June 20, 1776, LDC 4:271–73.

  35. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:350.

  36. JA, Diary, September 15, 1775, DAJA 2:172; Braxton to Carter, April 14, 1776, LDC 3:522–23. Unless otherwise noted, all the profiles of the members of Congress are drawn from Hawke, Honorable Treason.

  37. Clark to Elias Dayton, July 4, 1776, LDC 4:379.

  CHAPTER 14: “THIS WILL CEMENT THE UNION”: AMERICA IS SET FREE

  1. JA wrote two letters to his wife on this day. See JA to AA, July 3, 1776, AFC 2:27–28, 30.

  2. JCC 5:510.

  3. Am Archives 4th series, 6:1728, 1731–32.

  4. GW to Hancock, July 3, 1776, PGWR 5:191, 193.

  5. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), 144.

  6. Maier, American Scripture, 145–46.

  7. TJ, Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, [June 7–August 1, 1776], PTJ 1:314–15. TJ did not specify the Rhode Islanders as among those who wished to strike the section on African slavery, though he wrote in his notes that “our Northern brethren also … felt a little tender … for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”

  8. This section on Congress’s editing of the draft declaration draws on Maier, American Scripture, 143–48, which in magnificent detail chronicles each and every alteration made by Congress.

  9. The best accounts concerning how Congress edited the draft document are Julian Boyd, The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text as Shown in Facsimiles of Various Drafts by Its Author (Washington, D.C., 1943); Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (reprint, New York, 1960), 160–71; and Maier, American Scripture, 235–41.

  10. See Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1892–99), 10:120n. BF made clear in his prefatory remarks that his parable was also intended to persuade TJ that any work of a “draughtsman … to be reviewed by a public body” would inevitably face rough sledding.

  11. TJ to Lee, July 8, 1776, PTJ 1:456; Lee to TJ, July 21, 1776, ibid., 1:471.

  12. JA to Pickering, August 6, 1822, in WJA 2:514n.

  13. TJ, Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, [June 7–August 1, 1776], PTJ 1:315; LDC 4:381–82n.

  14. Rodney to Thomas Rodney, July 4, 1776, LDC 4:388; ibid., 4:390n.

  15. Paine, Diary, July 4, 1776, LDC 4:386; Paine to Joseph Palmer, July 6, 1776, ibid., 4:399; Ellery to Benjamin Ellery, July 10, 1776, ibid., 4:430; Gerry to Warren, July 5, 1776, ibid., 4:392; SA to Hawley, July 9, 1776, ibid., 4:416; JA to Mary Palmer, July 5, 1776, AFC 2:34; JA to AA, July 3, 1776, ibid., 2:30.

  EPILOGUE

  1. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), 153; David Hawke, A Transaction of Free Men: The Birth and Course of the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1964), 186.

  2. Hawke, Transaction of Free Men, 207–8; John Hazleton, The Declaration of Independence: Its History (New York, 1906), 242, 156–57; Gerry to Joseph Trumbull, July 8, 1776, LDC 4:406; JA to Chase, July 9, 1776, PJA 4:372.

  3. Silas Deane to C. W. F. Dumas, August 18, 1776, Am Archives 5th series, 1:1021; Claude Crespigny to Ralph Izard, August 25, 1776, ibid., 1:1148; Hazleton, Declaration of Independence, 258–81.

  4. GW, General Orders, July 9, 1776, PGWR 5:246; ibid., 5:247n; GW to Hancock, July 10, 1776, ibid., 5:258; Lt. Col. Thomas Seymour to Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, July 11, 1776, Am Archives 5th series, 1:205; Col. Thomas Hartley to Gen. Gates, ibid., 1:630.

  5. AA to JA, July 21, 1776, AFC 2:56.

  6. Jay Fliegelman, Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance (Stanford, Calif., 1993), 4–28. The quotation can be found on page 10.

  7. Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson (New York, 2010), 36–39.

  8. Maier, American Scripture, 157–59; Am Archives 5th series, 1:847.

  9. Hazleton, Declaration of Independence, 266–71, 561; Maier, American Scripture, 157; Stanley Weintraub, Iron Tears: America’s Battle for Freedom, Britain’s Quagmire, 1775–1783 (New York, 2005), 70–71.

  10. Joseph Barton to Henry Wisner, July 9, 1776, Am Archives 5th series, 1:139; Meshech Weare to President of Congress, July 16, 1776, ibid., 1:381; Col. Ogden to Aaron Burr, July 26, 1776, ibid., 1:603; GW, General Orders, July 9, 1776, PGWR 5:246; AA to JA, July 21, 1776, AFC 2:56.

  11. Action of the New York Provincial Convention, July 9, 1776, in Alexander C. Flick, ed., The American Revolution in New York (reprint, Port Washington, N.Y., 1967), 325; N.Y. Convention to Congress, July 11, 1776, Am Archives 5th series, 1:205; Bartlett to Langdon, July 15, 1776, LDC 4:459.

  12. JCC 5:590–91.

  13. Rush to JA, July 20, 1811, in John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (San Marino, Calif., 1966), 183.

  14. JA to AA, July 15, 1776, AFC 2:49; Gerry to Samuel and John Adams, July 21, 1776, PJA 4:402.

  15. Hazleton, Declaration of Independence, 193–219.

  16. LDC 3:xvi–xxii, 4:xv–xxi, 5:xvi–xxiii.

  17. The Howes’ appraisal is quoted in Weintraub, Iron Tears, 69.

  18. Lord Howe to GW, July 13, 1776, PGWR 5:296, 296–97n; Gen. Howe to GW, July 16, 1776, ibid., 341–42, 342n; Memorandum of an Interview with Lieutenant Colonel James Paterson, July 20, 1776, ibid., 5:398–401, 401–3n.

  19. Lord Howe to BF, June 20[–July 12], 1776, PBF, 22:483–84; BF to Lord Howe, July 20, 1776, 22:519–21. Through BF and other sources, Congress had known for nearly three months that the Howe brothers had been named peace commissioners and were en route to America. See Hartley to BF, March 31, 1776, ibid., 22:396–97.

  20. Ira D. Gruber, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution (New York, 1972), 117.

  21. JA to Warren, September 4, 1776, PJA 5:12; JA to SA, September 14, 1776, LDC 5:161; Gruber, Howe Brothers and the American Revolution, 117.

  22. JA to AA, September 6, 1776, AFC 2:120–21.

  23. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:419–20.

  24. Henry Strachey’s Notes on Lord Howe’s Meeting with a Committee of Congress, September 11, 1776, LDC 5:137–42; JA to SA, September 14, 1776, ibid., 5:159–62.

  25. See John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York, 2007), 468–545.

  26. Alan Valentine, Lord North (Norman, Okla., 1967), 1:509; PH 19:762–67; Weldon A. Brown, Empire or Independence: A Study in the Failure of Reconciliation, 1774–1783 (Baton Rouge, La., 1941), 225–26; Peter D. G. Thomas, Lord North (London, 1976), 116; Charles Ritcheson, British Politics and the American Revolution (Norman, Okla., 1954), 268–69.

  27. Valentine, Lord North, 2:274.

  28. George Athan Billias, Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman (New York, 1976), 70.

  29. See John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (New York, 2003), 222, 238–41.

  30. Clinton Rossit
er, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York, 1966), 247.

  31. JA to Hezekiah Niles, January 14, February 13, 1818, WJA 10:276, 282; JA to TJ, August 14, 1815, in Lestor J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 2:455.

  32. JA to Mercy Otis Warren, July 20, 27, 1808, in Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren, Massachussetts Historical Society, Collections (Boston, 1917), 4:339–40, 355; JA to Skelton Jones, March 11, 1809, WJA 9:611; JA to Tudor, September 18, 1818, ibid., 10:359; JA to TJ, August 24, 1815, in Cappon, Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:455; JA to Benjamin Rush, August 23, 1805, May 21, 1807, in Schutz and Adair, Spur of Fame, 34–35, 88.

  33. JA to Rush, June 12, 1812, in Schutz and Adair, Spur of Fame, 225.

  34. JA to Benjamin Kent, June 22, 1776, PJA 4:326. In 1818 JA told a publisher that the “accomplishment of it [a Declaration of Independence], in so short a time and by such simple means, was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks were made to strike together.” See JA to Niles, February 13, 1818, WJA 10:283.

  35. PH 18:1442.

  36. The King’s Speech at the Close of the Session, May 23, 1776, PH 18:1365.

  37. Maier, American Scripture, 160–62.

  38. For TJ’s intent when drafting the Declaration of Independence, see Chapter 12.

  39. The “holy writ” and “sacred text” quotations can be found in Maier, American Scripture, 154, 175. This passage on the history of the Declaration of Independence draws on Maier, pages 154–208.

  40. L. H. Butterfield, “The Jubilee of Independence, July 4, 1826,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 61 (1953): 135–38; Merrill D. Peterson, Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (New York, 1976), 3; Andrew Burstein, American Jubilee (New York, 2001), 255–86; Daniel Webster, “Adams and Jefferson, August 2, 1826, in The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (Boston, 1903), 1:324.

  APPENDIX: THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

  1. The Declaration of Independence bearing the name of John Hancock, and the attestation of Charles Thomson, as it appeared in the broadside ordered by Congress and published on July 5, 1776. See page 342 in the text for mention of the broadside.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The literature on the American Revolution is enormous. What follows is not a comprehensive bibliography but rather a guide to books and articles that I found especially helpful. Many additional works can be found in the notes.

  PAPERS AND DOCUMENTARY COLLECTIONS

  Adams, John: 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); L. H. Butterfield et al., eds., Adams Family Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass., 1963–); idem, The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961); Lestor J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961); John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (San Marino, Calif., 1966); Robert J. Taylor et al., eds., Papers of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1977–).

  Adams, Samuel: Harry Alonzo Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams, 4 vols. (New York, 1904–8).

  American Revolution: K. G. Davies, ed., Documents of the American Revolution, 1770–1783, 21 vols. (Dublin, 1972–81); Peter Force, American Archives, 4th series, 6 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1837–46); idem, American Archives, 5th series, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1847–53); Merrill Jensen, ed., Tracts of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (Indianapolis, Ind., 1967); idem, ed., American Colonial Documents to 1776, vol. 9, in David C. Douglas, ed., English Historical Documents, 12 vols. (London, 1956–70).

  Continental Congress: Worthington C. Ford et al., eds., The Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, 34 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1904–37); Paul H. Smith et al., eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, 29 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1976–2000).

  Dickinson, John: Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of John Dickinson (Philadelphia, 1895).

  Franklin, Benjamin: Verner Crane, ed., Benjamin Franklin’s Letters to the Press (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960); Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn., 1959–).

  Great Britain: [Anon.], The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth: Prepared by the Historical Manuscript Commission of Great Britain, 3 vols. (reprint, Boston, 1972); Clarence 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); Harry T. Dickinson, ed., British Pamphlets on the American Revolution, 1763–1785, 4 vols. (London, 2007); David C. Douglas, ed., English Historical Documents, 12 vols. (London, 1956–1970); John Fortescue, ed., The Correspondence of George III from 1760 to December 1783 (London, 1927–28); George H. Guttridge et al., eds., The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 10 vols. (Chicago, 1958); T. C. Hansard, ed., The Parliamentary History of England … The Parliamentary Debates, 36 vols. (London, 1806–20); David Murdoch, Rebellion in America: A Contemporary British Viewpoint, 1765–1783 (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1979); Lord John Russell, ed., Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox (reprint, New York, 1970).

  Jefferson, Thomas: Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, N.J., 1950–); Lestor J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961); Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 10 vols. (New York, 1892–99); A. A. Lipscomb and A. E. Bergh, eds., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1900–1904); Saul K. Padover, ed., The Complete Jefferson (New York, 1943).

  Paine, Thomas: Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, 2 vols. (New York, 1945).

  Rodney, Caesar: George Herbert Ryden, ed., Letters to and from Caesar Rodney (reprint, New York, 1970).

  Washington, George: W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series, 10 vols. (Charlottesville, Va., 1983–95); idem, The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series (Charlottesville, Va., 1985–); Donald Jackson et al., eds., The Diaries of George Washington, 6 vols. (Charlottesville, Va., 1976–79).

  SECONDARY SOURCES

  THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

  John Richard Alden, The American Revolution, 1775–1783 (New York, 1954); David Ammerman, In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 (Charlottesville, Va., 1974); Richard Archer, As If an Enemy’s Country (New York, 2010); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); idem, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1974); T. H. Breen, American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People (New York, 2010); Weldon Brown, Empire or Independence: A Study in the Failure of Reconciliation, 1774–1783 (Baton Rouge, La., 1941); Benjamin Carp, Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (New Haven, Conn., 2010); idem, Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (New York, 2007); Ian Christie and Benjamin Labaree, Empire or Independence: A British-American Dialogue on the Coming of the American Revolution (New York, 1976); H. Trevor Colbourne, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965); Edward Countryman, The American Revolution (New York, 1983); Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941); Jonathan Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 1985); John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (New York, 2003); Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority (New York, 1982); 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); William Hogeland, Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1–July 4, 1776 (New York, 2010); James H. Hutson, “The Partition Treaty and the Declaration of Independence,” Journal of American History 58 (1972): 877–96; Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution (New York, 1967); Milton Klein, “Failure of a Mission: The Drummond Peace Proposal of 1775,” Huntington Library Quarterly 35 (1972): 343–80; Benjamin Woods Labaree, The Boston Tea Party (New York, 1964); Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006); Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (revised edition, New York, 2007); Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of Opposition to Great Britain, 1765–1776 (New York, 1972); Philip James McFarland, The Brave Bostonians: Hutchinson, Quincy, Franklin, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Boulder, Colo., 1998); Jack N. Rakove, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (Boston, 2010); Ray Raphael, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation (New York, 2009); idem, The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord (New York, 2002); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War of Britain, 1764–1776 (New York, 1966); Richard van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire (Oxford, 1960); Stanley Weintraub, Iron Tears: America’s Battle for Freedom, Britain’s Quagmire, 1775–1783 (New York, 2005); Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (New York, 1969); idem, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992); Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre (New York, 1970).