 Chapter 6, Part 2 of Eve of the Revolution by Carl Becker. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Massachusetts men were meanwhile showing no disposition to submit to the king in that colony, a provincial congress, organized at Salem in October 1774, and afterwards removed to Cambridge, had assumed all powers of government in spite of general gauge and contrary to the provisions of the act, by which parliament had presumed to remodel the Massachusetts charter. Outside of Boston at least, the allegiance of the people was freely given to this extra legal government, and under its direction the towns began to prepare for defense by organizing the militia and procuring and storing arms and ammunition. To destroy such stores of ammunition seemed to general gauge quite the most obvious of his duties, and Colonel Smith was accordingly ordered to proceed to the village of Concord, some 18 miles northwest of Boston, and destroy the magazines which were known to be collected there. The night of the 18th of April was the time fixed for this expedition, and in the evening of that day patriots in Boston noted with alarm that bodies of troops were moving towards the waterside. Dr. Joseph Warren, knowing or easily guessing the destination of the troops, had once dispatched William Dawes, and later in the evening Paul Revere also to Lexington and Concord to spread the alarm. As the little army of Colonel Smith, a thousand men more or less left Boston and marched up into the country, Church bells and the booming of cannon announced their coming. Dave was breaking when the British troops approached the town of Lexington, and there on the green they could see in the early morning light perhaps half a hundred men standing in military array, fifty against a thousand. The British rushed forward with hazzaz in the midst of which shots were heard, and when the little band of minute men was dispersed eight of the fifty lay dead upon the village green. The battle of Lexington was begun, but it was not yet finished. Pushing on to Concord, the thousand disciplined British regulars captured and destroyed the military stores collected there. This was easily done, but the return from Concord to Lexington and from Lexington to Cambridge proved a disastrous retreat. The British found indeed no minute men drawn up in military array to block their path, but they found themselves subject to the deadly fire of men concealed behind the trees and rocks and clumps of shrubs that everywhere conveniently lined the open road. With this method of warfare not learned in books, the British were unfamiliar. Discipline was but a handicap, and the fifteen hundred soldiers that General Gage sent out to Lexington to rescue Colonel Smith served only to make the disaster greater in the end. When the retreating army finally reached the shelter of Cambridge, it had lost in killed and wounded two hundred and forty seven men, while the Americans of whom it had been confidently asserted in England that they would not stand against British regulars had lost but eighty eight. The courier announcing the news of Lexington passed through New York on the twenty-third of April, twenty-four hours later during the height of the excitement occasioned by that event. Intelligence arrived from England that Parliament had approved Lord North's resolution on conciliation. For extending the olive branch, the time was inauspicious, and when the Second Continental Congress assembled two weeks later on the tenth of May, men were everywhere, wrathfully declaring that the blood shed at Lexington made allegiance to Britain forever impossible. It might indeed have seemed that the time had come when every man must decide once for all whether he would submit unreservedly to the King or stand without question for the defense of America. Yet not all men, not a majority of men in the Second Continental Congress were of that opinion. The Second Congress was filled with moderate minded men who would not believe the time had come when that decision had to be made, men who were bound to sign themselves British Americans till the last possible moment, many of whom could not now have told whether in the end they would sign themselves Britons or Americans. Surely they said we need not make the decision yet. We have the best of reasons for knowing that Britain will not press matters to extremities. Can we not handle the olive branch and the sword as well as Lord North? A little fighting to convince ministers that we can't be frightened and all will be well. We shall have been neither rebels nor slaves. The Second Congress was full of men who were as yet neither nor. There was Joseph Galloway, once more elected to represent Pennsylvania, to do what he could to keep Congress from hasty action hoping for the best, yet rather expecting the worst, discreetly retiring at an early date within the ranks of the British loyalists. John Alsop, the soft, sweet man, was also there active enough in his mild way until the very last, until the Declaration of Independence, as he said, closed the last door to reconciliation. There, too, was James Dwayne with never so great need of his surveying eye to enable him to size up the situation. He is more discreet than anyone and sits quietly in his seat on those days when he finds it convenient to attend, which is not too often, especially after November, at which time he moved his effects to Dwayne's borough and so very soon disappears from sight, except perhaps vicariously in the person of his servant, James Brattle, whom we see flitting obscurely from Philadelphia to New York conveying secret information to Governor Tryan. John Jay, the hard-reading young lawyer who favored Mr. Galloway's plan but in the end signed the association, here he is again, edging his way carefully along, watching his step, crossing no bridges beforehand, well over indeed before he seems aware of any gulf to be crossed. And here is the famous Pennsylvania farmer, leader of all moderate men, John Dickinson, only too well aware of the gulf opening up before him, fervently praying that it may close again of its own accord. Mr. Dickinson has no mind for anything but conciliation to obtain which he will go the length of donning a Colonel's uniform, or at least a Colonel's title, perfecting himself and his neighbors in the manual of arms against the day when the king would graciously listen to the loyal and humble petition of the Congress. Mr. Dickinson, staking all on the petition, was distressed at the rash talk that went on out of doors and in this respect no one distressed him more than his old friend John Adams, who thought and said that a petition was a waste of time and it was all for the most vigorous measures. Such doubtless as Demosthenes might have counseled the seizure of all crown officers, the formation of state governments, the raising of an army, and negotiations for obtaining the assistance of France. When Mr. Dickinson, having marshaled his followers from the middle colonies and South Carolina, got his petition before the Congress, John Adams, as a matter of course, made an opposition to it in as long a speech as I commonly made in answer to all the arguments that had been urged. And Adams relates in his diary how, being shortly called out of Congress Hall, he was followed by Mr. Dickinson, who broke out upon him in great anger with his the reason, Mr. Adams, that you New England men oppose our measures of reconciliation. There now is Sullivan in a long harangue following you in a determined opposition to our petition to the king. Look ye, if you don't concur with us in our Pacific system, I and a number of us will take off from you in New England, and we will carry on the opposition by ourselves in our own way. At that moment it chanced that John Adams was in a very happy temper, which was not always the case, and so he says, was able to reply very coolly. Mr. Dickinson, there are many things that I can very cheerfully sacrifice to harmony and even to unanimity. But I am not to be threatened into an express adoption or approbation of measures which my judgment reprobates. I am a misjudge, and if they pronounce against me, I must submit as if they determine against you, you ought to acquiesce. The Congress did decide, it decided to adopt Mr. Dickinson's petition and to this measure John Adams submitted. But the Congress also decided to raise a continental army to assist Massachusetts in driving the British forces out of Boston, of which army it appointed as Commander-in-Chief George Washington Esquire. By the justification of these measures it published a declaration of the causes and necessity of taking up arms. Our cause is just, our union is perfect, our internal resources are great, and if necessary foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. Fortified with these animating reflections we declare that the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume we will employ for the preservation of our liberties being with one mind resolved to die free men rather than live slaves. We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors with an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial judge and ruler of the universe. We implore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this great conflict to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war. In these measures Mr. Dickinson acquiesced as John Adams had submitted to the petition the perfect union which was thus attained was nevertheless a union of wills rather than of opinions and on July 24, 1775 in a letter to James Warren John Adams gave a frank account of the state of mind to which the perfect union had reduced him. In confidence I am determined to write freely to you this time a certain great fortune and piddling genius whose fame has been trumpeted so loudly has given a silly cast to our whole doings. We are between hawk and buzzard. We ought to have had in our hands a month ago the whole legislative executive and judicial of the whole continent and have completely modeled a constitution. To have raised a naval power and opened our ports wide to have arrested every friend of government on the continent and held them as hostages for the poor victims of Boston and then opened the doors wide as possible for peace and reconciliation. After that they might have petitioned and negotiated and addressed etc. If they would, is all this extravagant? Is it wild? Is it not the soundest policy? It seems that Mr. Adams would have presented the sword boldly keeping the olive branch carefully concealed behind his back. His letter intercepted by the British government and printed about the time when Mr. Dickinson's petition was received in London did nothing to make the union in America more perfect or to facilitate the opening of that refractory door for peace and reconciliation. The truth is that John Adams no longer believed in the possibility of opening this door even by the tiniest crack and even those who still had faith in the petition as a means to that end found it somewhat difficult to keep their faith alive during the weary month of October while they waited for the king's reply. Mr. Chase, although he had not absolutely discarded every glimpse of a hope of reconciliation, admitted that the prospect was gloomy. Mr. Zubly assured Congress that he did hope for a reconciliation and that this winter may bring it, and he added, as if justifying himself against skeptical shrugs of shoulders, I may enjoy my hopes are for reconciliation. Others may enjoy theirs that none will take place. It might almost seem that the idea of reconciliation in this October of 1775 was a vanishing image to be enjoyed retrospectively rather than anything substantial to build upon for the future. This it was perhaps that gave a special point to Mr. Zubly's oft-repeated assertion that Congress must speedily obtain one of two things, a reconciliation with Great Britain or the means of carrying on the war. Reconciliation or war, this was surely a new antithesis, had not arms been taken up for the purpose precisely of disposing their adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms. Does Mr. Zubly mean to say then that war is an alternative to reconciliation, an alternative which will lead the colonies away from compromise towards that which all have professed not to desire? Is Mr. Zubly hinting at independence even before the king has replied to the petition? No, this is not what Mr. Zubly meant, what he had in the back of his mind and what the Congress was coming to have in the back of its mind if one may judge from the abbreviated notes which John Adams took of the debates in the fall of 1775 was that if the colonies could not obtain reconciliation by means of the non-intercourse measures very soon, this very winter, as Mr. Zubly hoped, they would have to rely for reconciliation upon a vigorous prosecution of the war, in which case the non-intercourse measures were likely to prove an obstacle rather than an advantage since they would make it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain the means of carrying on the war. The non-intercourse measures had been designed to obtain conciliation by forcing Great Britain to make concessions, but if Great Britain would make no concessions, then the non-intercourse measures by destroying the trade and prosperity of the colonies would have no other effect than to bring about conciliation by forcing the colonies to make concessions themselves. This was not the kind of conciliation that anyone wanted and so the real antithesis which now confronted Congress was between war and non-intercourse. Mr. Livingston put the situation clearly when he said, we are between hawk and buzzard, we puzzle ourselves between the commercial and war-like opposition. Through long debates, Congress puzzled itself over the difficult task of maintaining the association and of obtaining the means for carrying on the war. Doubtless, a simple way out would be for Congress to allow so much exportation, only as might be necessary to pay for arms and ammunition and still not so simple either, since it would at once excite many jealousies. To get powder, Mr. Jay observed we keep a secret law that produce may be exported, then come the wrangles among the people, a vessel is seen loading, a fellow runs to the committee, well it could not be helped, let the fellow run to the committee and let the committee reassure him. That was the business of the committee and so the Congress authorized the several colonies to export as much produce except horned cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry, as they may deem necessary for the importation of arms, ammunition, sulfur, and saltpeter. Thus powder might be obtained. Nevertheless, war could not live by powder alone. The impoundable moral factors had to be considered, chief of which was the popular support or opposition which Congress and the Army might count upon under certain circumstances. No doubt people were patriotic and wished to maintain their rights, but no doubt people would be more patriotic and more enthusiastic and practically active in their support of both Congress and the Army if they were reasonably prosperous and contended than if they were not. Self-denying ordinances were by their very nature of temporary and limited efficacy, and it was pertinent to inquire how long the people would be content with a total stoppage of trade and the decay of business which was becoming every day more marked. We can live on acorns, but will we? It would perhaps be prudent not to expect more virtue from our people than any people ever had. It would be prudent not to put virtue to severe a test, lest we wear it out, and it might well be asked what would wear it out and disunite us more than the decay of all business. The people will feel and will say that Congress taxed them and oppressed them more than Parliament. If the people were to be asked to fight for their rights, they must at all hazards not be allowed to say that Congress oppressed them more than Parliament. For the moment all this was no more than a confession that the association originally designed as a finely chiseled stepping stone to reconciliation was likely to prove a stumbling block unless the King graciously extended his royal hand to give a hearty lift. It presently appeared that the King refused to extend his hand. October 31, 1775, information reached America that Richard Penn and Arthur Lee, having presented the petition to Lord Dartmouth, were informed that the King would not receive them, and furthermore that no answer would be returned to the Congress, ignoring the petition was to exhibit only one degree more of contempt for that carefully prepared document than the Congress had shown for Lord North's resolution on conciliation. And now that the olive branch had been spurned on both sides, it was a little difficult to see how either side could possibly refuse the sword. That the colonies would refuse the sword was not very likely, but as if to make a refusal impossible, the British government on December 22, 1775 decided to thrust the sword into their hands. This at all events was thought by many men to be the effect of the Prohibitory Act, which declared the colonies outside the protection of the crown, in which for the purpose of reducing them to submission laid an embargo upon all their trade and proclaimed their ports in a state of blockade. I know not, John Adams wrote, whether you have seen the Act of Parliament called the Restraining Act or Prohibitory Act or Paratical Act or Act of Independence, for by all these titles it is called. I think the most opposite is the Act of Independence. The King, Lords and Commons have united in sundering this country from that, I think, forever. It is a complete dismemberment of the British Empire. It throws 13 colonies out of the Royal Protection and makes us independent in spite of supplications and entreaties. It may be fortunate that the Act of Independence should come from the British Parliament rather than from the American Congress, but it is very odd that Americans should hesitate at accepting such a gift from them. The majority of those who refused to accept it and the number was large, retired with saddened hearts for the most part into the ranks of the British Loyalists. Only a few with John Dickinson at their head could still visualize the vanishing image of reconciliation. Whether the Prohibitory Act made reconciliation impossible or not, one thing at all advanced it made clear if Britain was bent on forcing the colonies to submit by ruining their trade, it could scarcely be good policy for the colonies to help her do it. Of which the reasonable conclusion seemed to be that, since the Parliament wished to close the ports of America to the world, Congress would do well to open them to the world. On February 16, 1776, Congress, accordingly, took into consideration the propriety of opening the ports. To declare the ports open to the world was no doubt easily done, but the main thing, after all, was to carry on trade with the world. And this was not so easy since British naval vessels were there to prevent it. We can't carry on a beneficial trade as our enemies will take our ships. So Mr. Sherman said, and of this he thought the obvious inference was that a treaty with a foreign power would be necessary before we open our trade to protect it. A treaty with a foreign power, Mr. Whith also mentioned this as a possible way of reviving the trade of the colonies, but a treaty with a foreign power was easier conceived of than made. Mr. Whith thought other things are to be considered before we adopt such a measure. In considering these other things, Mr. Whith asked and answered the fundamental question in what character shall we treat as subjects of Great Britain, whether we should offer our trade to the Court of France. Would they take notice of it any more than if Bristol or Liverpool should offer theirs while we profess to be subjects? No, we must declare ourselves a free people. Thus it appeared that the character of British subjects, no less than the association, was a stumbling block in the way of obtaining the means of carrying on the war. The sword as an instrument for maintaining rights could after all not be effectively wielded by America so long as her hand was shackled by the token ties of a professed allegiance to Britain. Therefore, when the Congress on the 6th of April opened the ports of the colonies to the world, the Declaration of Independence was a foregone conclusion. The idea of independence for many months passed had hovered like a disembodied hope or a menace about the entrance ways of controversy. A few clear-sighted men such as John Adams and Samuel Seabury had so long contemplated the idea without blinking that it had taken form and substance, but the great majority had steadily refused to consider it except as a possible alternative not needing for the present to be embraced. All these moderate, middle-of-the-way men had now to bring this idea into the focus of attention for the great illusion that Britain would not push matters to extremities was rapidly dissolving and the time has come when it was no longer possible for any man to be a British American and when every man must decide whether it was better to be an American or a price of rebellion or a Britain even at the price of submission. It is true that many never made up their minds on this point. Being quite content to swear allegiance to whichever cause, according to time or place, happened to be in the Ascendant, but of all those thinking men whose minds could be made up to stay, perhaps a third, this is the estimate of John Adams, joined the ranks of the British loyalists while the rest with more or less reluctance gave their support little or great to the cause of independence. When one has made with whatever reluctance an irrevocable decision, it is doubtless well to become adjusted to it as rapidly as possible and this he can best do by thinking of the decision as a wise one, the only one in fact which a sensible person could have made. Thus it was that the idea of independence embraced by most men with reluctance as a last resort and a necessary evil rapidly lost in proportion as it seemed necessary its character of evil took on the character of the highest wisdom and so came to be regarded as a predestined event which all honest patriots must rejoice in having had a hand in bringing about. This change in the point of view would doubtless have been made in any case but in rapidly investing the idea of independence with the shining virtues of an absolute good to be embraced joyously, a great influence must be ascribed to the little pamphlet entitled Common Sense, written by a man then known to good as Thomas Paine and printed in January 1776 intrinsically considered Common Sense was indeed no great performance, the matter thin at best was neither profoundly nor subtly reasoned, the manner could hardly be described by even the most complacent critic as humane or engaging, yet Common Sense had its brief hour of fame, its good fortune was to come at the psychological moment and being everywhere read during the months from January to July 1776 it was precisely suited to convince men not so much that they ought to declare independence as that they ought to declare it gladly ought to cast off lightly their former false and mockish affection for the mother country and once for all to make an end of backward yearning looks over the shoulder at this burning Sodom to a militant patriot like Thomas Paine it was profoundly humiliating to recall that for ten years past Americans had professed themselves humble and loyal subjects and dutiful children yielding to none in admiration for the excellent British Constitution desiring only to live and die as free citizens under the protecting wing of the mother country recalling all this sickening sentimentalism Mr. Paine uttered a loud and ringing bosh that is clear minds of Kant he said in effect and ask ourselves what is the nature of government in general and of the famous British Constitution in particular like the Abe Seyyes Mr. Paine had completely mastered the science of government which was in fact extremely simple men form societies he said to satisfy their wants and then find that governments have to be established to restrain their wickedness and therefore since government is obviously a necessary evil that government is best which is simplest just considered in this excellent British Constitution and say whether it is simple on the contrary it is the most complicated irrational and ridiculous contrivance ever devised as a government of enlightened men its admirers say that this complexity is a virtue on account of the nice balance of powers between kings lords and commons which guarantees a kind of liberty through the resulting inertia of the whole the lords check the commons and the commons check the king but how comes it that the king needs to be checked can he not be trusted this is really the secret of the whole business that monarchy naturally tends to despotism so that the complication of the British Constitution is a virtue only because its basic principle is false and vicious if Americans still accept the doctrine of the divine right of kings well and good if not then in heaven's name let them cease to bow down in abject admiration of the British Constitution and in ceasing to admire the British Constitution Americans should also Thomas Paine thought give up that other fatal error the superstition that up to the present unhappy moment the colonies that derive great benefits from living under the protecting wing of the mother country protection we have boasted the protection of great Britain without considering that her motive was interest not attachment and that she did not protect us from our enemies on our own account but from her enemies on her own account from those who have no quarrel with us on any other account and it will always be our enemies on the same account in odd sort of protection that which served only to entangle the colonies in the toils of European intrigues and rivalries and to make enemies of those who would otherwise be friends our duty to mankind at large as well as to ourselves instructs us to renounce the alliance because any submission to or dependence upon great Britain tends directly to involve this continent in European wars and quarrels and set us at variance with nations who would otherwise seek our friendship against whom we have neither anger nor complaint what foolishness then to seek reconciliation even if it were possible reconciliation at this stage would be the ruin of America if King George were indeed clever he would eagerly repeal all the obnoxious acts and make every concession for when the colonies had once become reconciled he could accomplish by craft and subtlety in the long run where he cannot do by force and violence in the short one the colonies having come to maturity cannot always remain subject to tutelage like the youth has reached his majority they must sooner or later go their own way why not now beware of reconciliation and of all those who advocate it for they are either interested men who are not to be trusted weak men who cannot see prejudice men who will not see or a certain set of moderate men who think better of the European world than it deserves such arguments were indeed precisely suited to convince men that independence so far from being an event in which they had become entangled by the fatal network of circumstance was an event which they freely willed read by almost every American and recommended as a work replete with truth against which none but the partial and prejudice can form any objection it satisfies multitudes that it is their true interest immediately to cut the Gordian knot by which the colonists have been bound to Great Britain and to open their commerce as an independent people to all the nations of the world in April and May after the Congress had opened the ports the tide set strongly and irresistibly in the direction of the formal declaration every post and every day rolls in upon us John Adams said independence like a torrent it was on the 7th of June that Richard Henry Lee in behalf of the Virginia delegation and in obedience to the instructions from the Virginia convention moved that these united colonies are in the right ought to be free and independent states that it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign alliances and that a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation the resolution respecting independency debated at length was postponed till the 1st of July when it was again brought up for consideration it was still on that day opposed by many chiefly by John Dickinson who now said that he should not be against independence ultimately but that he could not consent to it at the present moment because it would serve to divide rather than to unite the colonies at the close of the debate on the 1st of July there seemed little prospect of carrying the resolution by a unanimous vote the Delaware deputies were evenly divided the third member Cesar Rodney not being at the moment in Philadelphia the Pennsylvania deputies were opposed to the resolution three against two while the New York and South Carolina deputies were not in a position to vote at all having as they said no instructions the final vote was therefore again postponed until the following day he slept this night as not known but it is known that Cesar Rodney hastily summoned mounted his horse and rode post haste to Philadelphia arriving in time to cast the vote of Delaware in favor of independence it is known that John Dickinson and Robert Morris remained away from Independence Hall and that James Wilson changed his mind and voted with Franklin and Morton and it is known that the South Carolina deputies came somehow to the conclusion overnight that their instructions were after all sufficient thus it was that on July 2, 1776 12 colonies voted that these United Colonies are and have right to be free and independent states one week later the New York deputies having been properly instructed cast the vote of their colony for the resolution also meanwhile a committee had been appointed to prepare a formal declaration setting forth the circumstances and the motives which might justify them in the judgment of mankind in taking this momentous step had many meetings to discuss the matter and when the main points had been agreed upon John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were instructed to draw them up in form and clothe them in a proper dress many years afterwards in 1822 John Adams related as accurately as he could the conversation which took place when these two met to perform the task assigned them Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft I said I will not you should do it oh no, why will you not to do it? I will not, why? reasons and not, what can be your reasons? reason first, you are a virginian and a virginian ought to appear at the head of this business reason second, I am obnoxious suspected and unpopular you are very much otherwise reason third, you can write ten times better than I can well said Jefferson, if you are decided I will do as well as I can in some such manner as this it came about that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence without doing, as he said the best he could it is the judgment of posterity that Mr. Jefferson did very well which was doubtless due partly to the fact that he could write if not ten times better, at least better than John Adams, yet the happy phrasing of a brief paragraph or two cascarsly by itself have won so much fame for the author and perhaps much of the success of this famous paper came from the circumstance that ten years of controversy over the question of political rights forced Americans to abandon step by step the restricted ground of the positive and prescriptive rights of Englishmen and to take their stand on the broader ground of the natural and inherent rights of man to have said we hold this truth to be self evident that all Englishmen are endowed by the British Constitution with the customary right of taxing themselves internally but probably have made no great impression on the sophisticated European mind it was Thomas Jefferson's good fortune in the prevailing sentiment in America to give classic expression to those fundamental principles of a political faith which was destined in the course of a hundred years to win the allegiance of the greater part of the western world we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to cure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the government that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness it is to these principles for a generation somewhat obscured it must be confessed by the shining sword and the almighty dollar by the lengthening shadow of imperialism and the soporific haze of historic rights and the survival of the fittest it is to these principles these glittering generalities that the minds of men are turning again in this day of desolation as a refuge from the cult of efficiency and from faith in that which is just by the judgment of experience end of section 11 end of Eve of the Revolution by Carl Becker