Of course there were some actors in this drama, among them many equally sincere and equally honorable, who made different choices. Not enough attention—or respect—has been given to those who dissented from the decision for independence. Joseph Galloway, the most powerful politician in Pennsylvania when the Continental Congress first convened in early September 1774, was not the most charming or most likable man in Philadelphia that summer, but during the first session of the Congress he would introduce what may have been the most promising and creative proposal for ending the constitutional crisis with England—a Plan of Union calling for the creation of a special congress in which both Great Britain and the colonies would be represented. When his proposal was defeated—by some accounts by only a single vote—Galloway would devote all of his energies to thwarting any move toward independence. Once independence was declared, he would try, unsuccessfully, to mobilize the American colonists into a loyalist army committed to putting an end to the American “treason” and then, in 1778, would flee with his daughter to England to try, again unsuccessfully, to lead the American Loyalist movement there.
There is one other character whose central role in this drama has not been given its due; indeed, he has sometimes been vilified as either misguided or simply cowardly. As the First Continental Congress began its deliberations, Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson was widely respected as the most astute constitutional theorist in all of America. Admired by nearly all (with the notable exception of his chief adversary, John Adams) for his integrity and devotion to principle, on July 2 Dickinson would speak movingly, and unsuccessfully, in favor of further attempts at reconciliation and against independence. He voted against the resolution for independence and refused to sign the Declaration of Independence, but having voted his conscience, he immediately departed the Congress to serve as a major general in the patriot army. Dickinson predicted that his stand against independence would harm his reputation for all of eternity. I hope that this narrative of the journey toward independence will help explain the reasons for Dickinson’s actions and in doing so resurrect the good reputation of this highly principled Pennsylvanian.
One of the recurring themes in this account of the decision for independence is the importance of leadership. In my previous work, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, I sought to demonstrate the varieties of leadership represented by those men who gathered together in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787: the deep and thoughtful scholarly deliberation of James Madison and James Wilson; Gouverneur Morris’s brilliant, but sometimes combative advocacy of a vastly strengthened central government; the Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman’s dogged, practical-minded negotiations aimed at resolving the differences between large- and small-state delegates; and George Washington’s reserved, but powerful, command over every day of the proceedings during that summer. The outcome—the creation of a “more perfect,” if not entirely perfect, union—was in large measure the result not only of the individual leadership qualities of the convention delegates, but also of the collective leadership they displayed as they came together in a spirit of collaboration and compromise.
As we will see in the coming pages, the types of leadership on display in the Continental Congress during the months leading to independence were at least as varied as those at the Constitutional Convention of 1787—the fiery oratory of Patrick Henry; the indefatigable behind-the-scenes political maneuvering of John and Sam Adams; and the powerful and elegant literary gifts of Thomas Jefferson. But the challenges facing the revolutionaries of 1776 were not only more formidable, but also less predictable. The thirty-nine “Founding Fathers” who signed the Constitution in September of 1787 had as their starting point the successful outcome of the bold actions of their predecessors in 1776. The fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence, five of whom also later signed the Constitution, had no past precedents, no examples of previous occasions in which Americans from all of the colonies had engaged successfully in a common cause, to guide them. In even contemplating the unprecedented act of a people’s revolution against duly constituted authority, they were setting sail on uncharted waters.
The delegates to the Continental Congress faced other leadership challenges as well. At every stage during the twenty-two months of their service, and in spite of the oath of secrecy they had taken requiring that they not reveal the details of their deliberations in the Congress, the delegates knew that they were responsible to the people of America in whose name they were acting. As they first convened, it may well have been the case that many of the delegates represented the leading edge of public opinion. But as the months dragged on, as the people of America mobilized to enforce a boycott of all British trade in America and, beginning in April of 1775, as ordinary Americans put their lives on the line in outright war against a British adversary, many of the delegates discovered that leadership consisted of paying closer attention to those on the front lines of the conflict with Great Britain. America on the eve of the Revolution was by no means a fully democratic society, but the very act of declaring independence in the name of the people would move both leaders and ordinary Americans closer to recognizing the practical implications of their invocation of principles of democracy and popular sovereignty.
The story of American independence is not just about the thoughts and actions of individuals. One of the other important themes of this book is that of the evolution of American institutions and, indeed, American identity. When the Continental Congress first convened, it was an ad hoc extra-legal body with limited power and authority. It was, consonant with the eighteenth-century meaning of the word “congress,” a body composed of delegates obliged to follow the instructions given them by their separate and autonomous legislatures. While its delegates might pass resolutions and draft petitions, it did not have the power to legislate, much less the power to raise an army or fight a war. But from the fall of 1774 to the summer of 1776 the Continental Congress would begin to lay claim to both legislative and executive powers, and, in the process, would ultimately transform the very meaning of the word “congress.” The story of the complete transformation of the “continental” congress into an American congress armed with the sovereign power to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty” is one that would not begin to achieve full reality until the creation of a new federal government under the United States Constitution. But the beginning of that story—with enormous political and constitutional implications that continue to affect our lives even today—occurred with the convening of the First Continental Congress in September of 1774.
The final paragraph of the Declaration of Independence spoke for the first time of “the united States of America,” making the pledge of “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” on behalf of all of the American people. In truth, it was more an expression of hope than a description of reality, but it marked the beginning of the journey toward becoming a truly American nation. President Barack Obama, in his first Independence Day celebratory address from the White House on July 4, 2009, recognized the radical character of that fateful step. He astutely pointed to the “extraordinary audacity it took . . . for a group of patriots to cast off the title of ‘subject’ for ‘citizen,’ and to put ideas to paper that were as simple as they were revolutionary: that we are equal; that we are free; that we can pursue our full measure of happiness and make of our lives what we will.”
Audacious it was. It was certainly among the most important and far-reaching decisions in the history of the Western world. It marked the first attempt by a colonial people to determine their own political destiny. It was the first revolution based on the principle of popular sovereignty, the notion that since governments are based on the consent of the people, it is also “the Right of the People to alter or abolish” that government if it ceases to serve the purposes for which it was created. More expansively, but also more tentatively,
Americans, in their Declaration of Independence, held out the hope of a democratic and egalitarian future. The Americans’ success in gaining their independence, achieved only after eight years of exhausting and bloody warfare, would send a message to the rest of the world, changing the course of history in the process. It is a message that still reverberates all over the globe today.
ONE
THE GENESIS OF REVOLUTION, 1763–1774
The Turning Point
They came, seven thousand strong, from the neighborhoods of Boston and the surrounding countryside. They streamed down the streets of the south side of Boston, heading toward Griffin’s Wharf. Few among them, it is likely, on that cold, clear night of December 16, 1773, would ever forget what they were about to see.
Joshua Wyeth, a sixteen-year-old journeyman blacksmith, was one of those who turned the tide of history that night. He and his fellows dressed up as Mohawk warriors to disguise their identity. Within the three fifty-man groups there were a few well-established artisans or middle-class merchants, including the prominent Boston silversmith Paul Revere. But most were young apprentices, journeymen and merchant seamen. They smeared their faces with grease or lamp black, so that, in Joshua Wyeth’s words, “our most intimate friends among the spectators had not the least knowledge of us. We sure resembled devils from the bottomless pit rather than men.”1
At about 6:15 they carefully, quietly boarded three ships—the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver. All three had been built in America, primarily for the purpose of whaling, and were owned by Americans. But on that night they were under the command of captains from the British East India Company, and their cargo was not whale oil. In the ships’ holds were 342 wooden chests, each weighing 400 pounds, containing in all 92,600 pounds of tea from India. In Wyeth’s recollection, the men “were merry . . . at the idea of making so large a cup of tea for the fishes,” but they also realized that stealth and discipline were essential to the success of their mission. It was serious business, and they spoke “no more words than were absolutely necessary.” And it was hard work, chopping the wooden chests open and heaving them overboard. Another of the band, Samuel Nowell, a ship’s carpenter, recalled: “I was then young, enterprising, and courageous. And I presume my broad axe was never more dexterously used than while I was staving the Chests and throwing them overboard.”2
As the crowd on the wharf watched, they could hear the steady chopping of the hatchets, and by nine o’clock that evening, the work was done. To avoid the accusation that they were a disorderly mob run amok, they took special care to prevent any unnecessary breakage and any theft. When a padlock in the captain’s cabin of one of the ships was accidentally broken, one of the participants was sent into town to secure a replacement. And when one of the party attempted to make off with some of the loose tea by hiding it in the lining of his coat, his co-conspirators stripped him, covered him in mud, and gave him “a severe bruising in the bargain.” Only their desire to avoid any further disturbance kept him from being tarred and feathered.3
There was a palpable sense of excitement, of ebullience, in the crowd at the wharf on that moonless night as they strained to see the tea sink into the water. But there was also a sense of restraint. The Massachusetts Gazette, reporting on the events of the evening, noted with some amazement that “the town was very quiet during the whole evening and the night following.” It seemed that virtually everyone in the town understood that something extraordinary had occurred, that it was a time for solemn contemplation rather than raucous celebration. Few, if any, realized that they had stood witness to the beginning of a revolution.4
The Beginnings
A decade earlier it would have been difficult for anyone in America to have predicted, or even imagined, the sense of crisis that existed among Americans during the lead-up and in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party. Although individual American colonies and their political leaders had engaged in occasional skirmishes over a variety of economic or government policies during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, on the whole, the weight of “imperial” authority had rested very lightly on American shoulders. Colonial legislatures, and the provincial leaders who served in those legislatures, enjoyed remarkable autonomy; indeed, there was good reason for the members of America’s provincial ruling class to feel that they had achieved a status nearly equal to that of their counterparts in the British Parliament. And the unofficial, but nevertheless very real, British policy of “salutary neglect” had allowed for a burgeoning American commercial economy that sometimes operated in technical violation of British navigation laws.5
But this would all begin to change in the year 1763. The origins of the Americans’ conflict with their mother country lay in those two things that have caused trouble since time immemorial: money and taxes. The British government, in the aftermath of a successful but costly war with France (as well as against some of France’s Indian allies in North America), found itself with a vastly expanded empire west of the Appalachian mountains and in Canada. That was the good news. The bad news was that the costs of that war had left the government deeply in debt; given the need to protect their newly won gains, the king and members of Parliament could see the prospect of even deeper debt on the horizon. In their view, the Americans should surely pay their fair share of the costs of the war and its aftermath, for they would ultimately find in those newly acquired lands new sources of opportunity.
Of course, the Americans were not likely to see things that way. They too had made many sacrifices of blood and treasure during the Seven Years’ War. And a young colonel from Virginia, George Washington, had earned an international reputation for his bravery as a commander of a Virginia militia regiment during that war. From the Americans’ point of view, the conclusion of the Seven Year’s War marked a time when they could begin to enjoy the relative peace in a world in which the threat of French intrigue and Indian warfare on their borders was substantially diminished. At precisely the time when royal officials in London were concluding that the Americans should start to pay their fair share of the costs of the empire from which they had enjoyed such great benefit, most Americans, weary of sacrifice and feeling more “independent” of the need for Great Britain’s help in protecting their frontier, were hardly in a mood to increase their financial contributions to royal officials back in London.
Beginning in 1764 and 1765, the British Parliament began levying new taxes on the colonies aimed not merely at the regulation of trade but at raising a revenue to pay for the increased costs of managing their expanding empire. In 1764, the king’s chancellor of the exchequer George Grenville presented to Parliament a bill that actually lowered the tax on foreign molasses imported into America from six pence per gallon to three pence. Knowing, however, that Americans had been smuggling molasses and therefore paying no duty on the commodity, Grenville also made it clear that, by tightening the enforcement of existing customs regulations, British customs collectors would actually collect the tax and therefore add to the revenue in the British treasury. Parliament quickly passed the so-called Sugar Act, and the reformulation of British tax policy had begun. In 1765, Grenville and the British Parliament moved forward with a more far-reaching piece of legislation, the Stamp Act, which imposed a tax affecting many of the internal operations of the American economy, including taxes on a variety of commercial and legal documents. In fact the amount of the taxes was not so large as to present much of an economic burden to Americans, but both the purpose of the taxes—to raise a revenue for the British treasury—and the means by which the taxes were imposed—enacted by a distant Parliament in which the colonists had no representatives and without their consent—were deeply offensive to Americans. Citing the principles of the unwritten, but deeply revered, “English constitution,” Americans protested the taxes on the grounds that they violated the principle of “no taxation without representation.”6
Protests against parliamentary taxation began in an orderly way—with the political lead
ers in the colonies’ provincial assemblies sending petitions to Parliament asking for the repeal of what they considered to be the unconstitutional and burdensome taxes. Beginning in Boston, ordinary folks in America’s cities and towns engaged in other forms of protest. Street marches and demonstrations gradually escalated into full-scale economic boycotts of British goods and, occasionally, the destruction of British property and violence aimed at the British officials charged with enforcing the new imperial policies.
What began as a constitutional debate between English and colonial political leaders was becoming something more volatile—an intensely personal conflict between British officials and ordinary folks on the streets of cities like Boston, New York and Philadelphia. American resistance bred reaction, with the British responding by sending more troops to restore order in their increasingly restive colonies. Parliament was provoked into passing additional legislation—not merely taxes, but other measures, including an order requiring that Americans provide lodging for British troops in their homes—an order that even further inflamed public opinion against the increasing parliamentary “tyranny.”
Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor Page 3
