The final article in the Association was directed not at merchants or vendors but at the political leaders of all thirteen colonies. The delegates agreed to cut off all relations with any colony found to be in violation of the terms of the Association, publicizing the offending colony “as unworthy of the rights of freemen, and as inimical to the liberties of their country.” Strictly speaking, the Congress had no formal constitutional power, nor any of the requisite institutional structures, to bind any colony to do anything that it did not wish to do, but this final article, at least rhetorically, was yet another step toward creating a Congress with real governing power, a Congress prepared to speak in the name of the people of the “united colonies.”20
In both its economic and political contexts, the Association was a genuinely radical document. It asked the American people, and American merchants in particular, to make significant sacrifices. At the same time it asked the American colonies—including Georgia, which remained absent from the Congress—to submit themselves to the authority of a superior entity. Isaac Low, one of the New York delegates most uneasy, if not downright unhappy, about the direction in which the first Congress was moving, asked: “Well, Can the People bear a total interruption of the West India trade? Can [they] live without Rum, Sugar, and Molasses? Will not their Impatience, and Vexation defeat the Measure?”21
In spite of misgivings like these, all of the delegates, including Low, endorsed the Association. Each of those present on October 20 was asked to sign his name to the Association—an act not merely of affirmation, but of commitment to uphold its provisions. And, apparently, everyone in the hall, with the exception of Samuel Rhoads, who had resigned from the Congress when he was elected mayor of Philadelphia, and Robert Goldsborough of Maryland, who had already departed for home, did so. Even Joseph Galloway, albeit reluctantly, stepped forward to sign. He later claimed that he did so only to prevent even “more violent measures” from being proposed by the Congress. He also reported around this time that he was fearful for his safety, having received a halter as a “present” from an anonymous political enemy, which Galloway interpreted as a threat on his life.22
That evening the delegates relaxed at a grand feast, staged in their honor by the Pennsylvania Assembly. The delegates gave toasts to the work of the Congress and to the spirit of American liberty. One toast expressed a more pacific sentiment: “May the Sword of the Parent never be Stain’d with the Blood of her Children.” John Adams enjoyed himself that evening, but unable to repress his Puritan distrust of Quakerism, and of Pennsylvania’s Quaker political leaders in particular, added, “Two or 3 broad-brims, over against me at Table—one of them said this is not a Toast but a Prayer, come let us join in it—and they took their glasses accordingly.” Adams would never let go of his distrust of the “broad-brims” and rarely missed an opportunity to say something disparaging about members of the Quaker sect, but even he must have felt great satisfaction over how far the Congress had come.23
TEN
THE FIRST CONGRESS COMPLETES ITS BUSINESS
THE SIGNING OF the Association—the unanimous signing—was a momentous event. It had not come easily—with nearly all of the delegates calculating the self-interest of their respective colonies, the obstinacy of the South Carolinians in insisting that rice be exempted from the ban on exports to Great Britain and the grumbling of at least a few delegates from New York and Pennsylvania. But amidst all the grumbling and jostling, the delegates had achieved unity on what would prove to be the most important action that the Congress would take that fall. The adoption and implementation of the Association would set in motion a series of events involving local enforcement officers, American merchants and royal officials in London that would have profound consequences for relations among American colonists and between American colonial officials and the royal government in London. It also marked the first occasion in which the Congress asserted genuine legislative, as opposed to purely rhetorical, power, to speak and act in the name of the people of the American colonies.
The Congress’s next item of business was to compose messages to two large groups, neither of whom were present in Philadelphia in a physical sense, but whose interests in the outcome of their deliberations were always in the back of the delegates’ minds. Richard Henry Lee, John Jay and William Livingston would be charged with drafting both of these addresses. The first was directed at the people of Great Britain. In October of 1774, the delegates were still thinking of themselves as loyal subjects of the king and proud members of the British empire. Although their anger with Parliament and with many of the king’s ministers was steadily rising, their sense of common identity with their fellow subjects back in England was undiminished. John Jay would take the lead in drafting the address to their fellow subjects in Great Britain, still seeking to cloak the Congress’s fairly radical moves in a tone of moderation. Addressed to “Friends and Fellow Subjects,” its purpose was, in effect, to go over the heads of the members of Parliament, seeking to persuade the voters who elected them to force a change in their behavior. Jay acknowledged England’s glorious heritage, “a nation led to greatness by the hand of Liberty,” but then went on to observe a lamentable trend in which, by the actions of a few, corrupt ministers in Parliament, the government had descended “to the ungrateful task of forging chains for her Friends and Children, and instead of giving support to freedom, turns advocate for Slavery and Oppression.” Then followed a litany of the familiar American grievances, from unconstitutional taxes to the suspension of trial by jury to the patent injustices of the Coercive Acts. Jay reserved particular scorn for the Quebec Act. Appealing to the instinctive ethnocentrism and anti-Catholicism of his fellow subjects in England, he raised the specter of an ever-increasing papist influence in both America and England. Jay concluded with a passionate plea that the inherent virtue, sense of justice and public spirit of the British people would carry the day. He asked his fellow British subjects to ignore the false accusations about the seditious behavior of the colonists, assuring them that the Americans had no desire for independence, that if permitted “to be as free as yourselves . . . we shall ever esteem a union with you . . . we shall ever be ready to contribute all in our power to the welfare of the Empire.” That happy state could only be achieved, however, if the British people elected a Parliament capable of seeing the error of its ways and repudiated the “wicked ministers and evil counsellors” responsible for the present crisis.1
When it came to their fellow colonists, the delegates had a different task. The “Address to the Inhabitants of the American Colonies” reveals a body aware that it needed to legitimize its actions and its own ability to speak for and act on behalf of the people of the colonies. Although the committee consisting of Lee, Livingston and Jay was supposedly responsible for drafting this address as well, it appears that John Dickinson, who had only the day before taken his seat in the Congress, was the author. Its moderate, measured tone was very much in Dickinson’s style, and, more important, the substance of the writing reflected the delegates’ realization that many Americans living away from the center of the conflict with England needed to be persuaded that the increasingly radical steps being taken by the Congress were justified.2
As they put the finishing touches to the two addresses on the afternoon of Friday, October 21, now forty-seven days into the Congress, many of the delegates were becoming restless, anxious to get about their business back home. Peyton Randolph, the President of the Congress, left for Williamsburg on October 22 to take up his duties as Speaker of the House of Burgesses. And when Randolph left, most of the Virginia delegation—Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton and Benjamin Harrison—went with him.3
The departure of the Virginians was an early warning sign of an absenteeism that would plague the Continental Congress for nearly the whole of its existence—right up to its extinction in March 1789. The Congress would always struggle not only with differences of opinion within its ranks on key policy issues, but al
so with the continuing tug and pull of the real work to be done back in the delegates home colonies. Those provincial interests were themselves a cause of differences of opinion on policy issues (for example, with South Carolina’s insistence that rice be exempted from the non-exportation agreement), but they were also persistent sources of distraction and inattention. The fact that five of Virginia’s seven delegates departed on October 23 (only Richard Henry Lee and the ever responsible George Washington remained) was a telling sign of the way in which provincial loyalties and affairs of a single colony often trumped the business of the “united colonies.”
The Address to the King of Great Britain
In spite of the departure of most of the Virginia delegation, there was still important business to be done. In drafting their Declaration of Rights and Grievances, the delegates had essentially denied that Parliament had any authority over the colonies. The only entity to which it continued to pledge loyalty and obedience was the institution of the monarchy, and therefore the only person to whom they could turn for a redress of their grievances was King George III.
The delegates had elected a committee consisting of Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, Thomas Johnson, Patrick Henry and John Rutledge to draft a petition to the king way back on October 1. The men elected were not only among the most prestigious and outspoken members of the Congress but also represented a rough geographical balance north to south. Sometime before October 21, Patrick Henry tried his hand at writing a draft of the petition. But whatever Henry’s oratorical skills, he was a failure, both on this and subsequent occasions, as a writer. Although there is no written record of the fact, it appears that the committee rejected Henry’s version and asked Richard Henry Lee to try his hand at composing another draft. John Dickinson, writing long after the fact, noted Henry’s “language of asperity” as the cause of its rejection, and though this is consistent with Henry’s reputation as a fiery and passionate advocate of resistance, the actual text of Henry’s draft was if anything milder than the final version adopted by Congress. The more likely explanation was its flat, passionless prose. Whether Henry’s departure from Congress on October 23 was the result of pique at having his attempt summarily rejected we do not know, but it is clear that Henry’s concern about provincial affairs back in Virginia had taken precedence over his interest in the formal proceedings of the Congress.4
Compared to Henry, Richard Henry Lee was shorter and more pointed in his criticism of Parliament. He singled out specific ministers—Lord North, the king’s chief minister; Lord Mansfield, the chief justice; and Lord Bute, the king’s (and, more important, the king’s mother’s) close confidant—as the men most responsible for the “unwise and destructive” policies being pursued by the British government. In so doing, it made what was supposed to be a conciliatory message to the king into something far more combative, for Bute, Mansfield and North were, after all, the king’s ministers, appointed by him and serving at his pleasure.5
Whereas Henry’s draft was rejected outright by his fellow committee members, Lee’s was used as a basis for a final draft. That version, as was the case with the address to the inhabitants of the American colonies, was almost certainly written by the newly arrived John Dickinson. Dickinson put a lot of time and ego into his effort, writing three separate drafts, each long and self-consciously learned. Consistent with Dickinson’s own personal loyalty to the king, his final attempt was fulsome in its expressions of affection for George III. His version, like that of Richard Henry Lee, was inclined to place most of the blame on the king’s ministers, “those designing and dangerous Men, who for several Years past incessantly employed to dissolve the Bonds of Society by prosecuting the most desperate and irritating projects of Oppression.” Unlike the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which explicitly denied parliamentary authority in nearly all matters of taxation and legislation, the petition to the king did not even mention Parliament. Instead, in its conclusion, the petition made clear that the Americans not only owed their allegiance to the king but, in so doing, depended upon him to intercede and to restore those rights they had so long enjoyed.6
John Adams, writing in his diary two days after Dickinson presented his draft to the Congress, described the Pennsylvania delegate as “delicate and timid,” suggesting that he found the draft overly submissive. This moment saw the beginning of what would come to be a persistently adversarial relationship between the two. In fact, Dickinson’s petition was a nearly pitch-perfect reflection of the divided state of mind of the vast majority of American colonists in the fall of 1774. On the one hand, it would have been hard for any royal official back in England to ignore the fact that the American Congress—not just a few hotheads in Boston but, apparently, nearly all of the representatives of the American colonies—had reached the point where they were denying Parliament’s authority in nearly every aspect of the colonies’ relationship with the mother country. And the language used to describe American grievances in every document emanating from the Congress, including Dickinson’s draft of the petition to the king, was highly emotional, even hyperbolic. “Evil,” “designing” ministers in Parliament, systematic plots among members of Parliament to “enslave” Americans—this was not the language of conciliation. But while the language and tone of the American protests against imperial policies would seem to be leading straight to the “independency” that some moderates and conservatives in the colonies so dreaded, the expressions of loyalty and affection for the king and the empire he ruled were extravagantly phrased. “Your majesty’s most faithful Subjects,” “your loyal people in America,” hearts that would “willingly bleed in your majesty’s service”—nearly all of the members of the Congress embraced those words not merely as a rhetorical ploy to flatter the king into a more sympathetic view of their cause, but also out of a genuine attachment to His Majesty and the empire he ruled.7
The Congress gave its official approval of the petition to the king on the morning of October 25. Although all sorts of British subjects had for at least two centuries sent petitions to the king and Parliament asking for a redress of grievances, Congress’s decision to deliberately separate the two was an unprecedented act whose significance would not be overlooked by either the king or members of Parliament. The Congress chose Richard Henry Lee to write to the colonial agents in London requesting that they present the petition to the king. One of the most important of those agents—in terms of both his international prestige as a scientist and his experience as a diplomat—was Benjamin Franklin, who spent most of the years between 1757 and 1775 living in London, acting as the agent—in effect, a paid lobbyist—for the colonies of Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The other truly notable colonial agent serving at that time was Edmund Burke, the prominent Anglo-Irish politician and political philosopher who, while he was serving as a member of Parliament was also serving as the lobbyist for the colony of New York. Lee’s letter asked the agents to “call in the aid of such Noblemen and Gentlemen [in London] as are esteemed firm friends to American liberty,” the hope being that by mobilizing the support of London’s most prominent citizens, especially those with close connections to the king and his circle, the king might be inclined to view the Americans’ petition more favorably.8
With the sending of the petition, the Congress had but one last substantive piece of business to dispatch before it could consider its mission complete. On October 26, its final day in session, the Congress approved an address to the people of Quebec. That document had the tricky task of winning the support of the people of that province while avoiding saying anything that Quebec’s Catholic residents, whom the delegates had already disparaged in their condemnation of the Quebec Act, would find offensive. With Dickinson once again the primary writer, the address emphasized the virtues of English principles of law and liberty and invited the residents of Quebec to send delegates to the Continental Congress when it next met—an invitation that must have seemed more than a little tardy and probably condescending in the b
argain. When the Congress next convened in May of 1775, it was perhaps not surprising to anyone that the province of Quebec would choose not to send delegates.9
The Congress’s final act, though ceremonial, was nevertheless one of great consequence. The forty-seven of the fifty-six delegates still in attendance lined up at the table at the front of the room to sign the Address to the King. The signatories even included those delegates who had been the most outspoken critics of the radical direction in which Congress had been moving, men like Joseph Galloway, James Duane, John Jay, Edward Rutledge and Connecticut’s Eliphalet Dyer. However much John Adams may have been inclined to criticize John Dickinson, the principal author of the petition, for his timidity, the fact that the Congress was able to achieve unanimity in its petition to the king owed at least in part to the ability of men like Dickinson to reach across the spectrum of political opinion in Carpenters’ Hall and forge a consensus. And with that significant achievement behind it, the Congress adjourned.10
Parting Impressions
By the time Henry Middleton, who had stepped in to serve as president after Peyton Randolph’s departure, raised the gavel to adjourn, the delegates were all eager to head home. Indeed, within a few days, the boardinghouses that had housed them for the past seven weeks would be empty. Almost all of the delegates, as they mounted their horses or climbed into their carriages, felt a sense not only of accomplishment but of camaraderie as well.
Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor Page 21
