Faced with the continuing non-attendance of the radical minority, the Assembly, unable to function, adjourned on June 14. The Pennsylvania Packet, still loyal to Dickinson and the moderates in the Assembly, castigated the radicals for “desertion and cowardice.” In fact, though, the adjournment led to a power vacuum that would be filled four days later when an extra-legal Provincial Conference, convened in the original meeting place of the Continental Congress, Carpenters’ Hall. Among the delegates to the Provincial Conference were a few known advocates of independence from the Continental Congress, such as Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, but perhaps more important, delegates who had not been part of the provincial ruling elite in the former Provincial Assembly, including new ones from the previously underrepresented western counties. Not only did the residents of those counties tend to be more favorably inclined toward independence, but their radical frame of mind was further buttressed by the decades of resentment toward the eastern elite that had dominated the Assembly and deprived them of an equitable voice in the affairs of the colony.
On June 24, the Provincial Conference approved a resolution stating: “We the deputies of the people of Pennsylvania . . . do in this public manner in behalf of ourselves, and with the approbation, consent, and authority of our constituents, unanimously declare our willingness to concur in a vote of the congress, declaring the united colonies free and independent states.” While the delegates to the Conference had not declared independence, or even instructed Pennsylvania’s delegates to the Continental Congress to vote in favor of independence, they had made clear their support of such a move and, perhaps more important, had asserted emphatically that they, not the now-dormant Provincial Assembly, were the true representatives of the people of their colony. For all practical purposes, people like John Dickinson, whatever their status within the Continental Congress, were finding their power and influence within provincial Pennsylvania politics rapidly eroding.26
As the critical July 1 debate on independence neared, Pennsylvania was in the unusual position of having an extra-legal Provincial Conference whose members emphatically favored independence and a delegation to the Continental Congress, most of whose members opposed it. The dynamic of events in Pennsylvania is perhaps the best example of an “internal revolution” accompanying America’s move toward independence. And, indeed, in the aftermath of independence, that internal revolution, motivated by the people out-of-doors, would result not only in a radical change in the political leadership within Pennsylvania politics, but also in the most democratic state constitution in all of America—extending the franchise to all taxpaying adult male citizens and establishing a unicameral legislature with annual elections to it and without a chief executive.
The political and economic fortunes of the colony of Delaware had always been closely tied to those of Pennsylvania. They were so close that most people still referred to the Delaware colony as the “three lower counties,” viewing its three counties as essentially appendages of Pennsylvania. Indeed, John Dickinson, who spent much of his leisure time at his country estate, Poplar Hill, near Dover, Delaware, was often considered as much a Delawarean as a Pennsylvanian. When the Continental Congress passed the resolution urging each of the colonies to set up its own government, both radical and moderate patriot leaders in Delaware were eager to take advantage of the offer, for they were in the midst of a confrontation, both verbal and military, with a substantial group of British sympathizers in Sussex and Kent Counties. Moreover, the presence of British naval vessels in the Chesapeake Bay offered a threat that Delaware was wholly unequipped to repel.
Caesar Rodney, one of Delaware’s delegates to the Continental Congress, was quick to support the idea of forming a new government. He, like Dickinson, believed that a “well-regulated government,” with a “Good Executive,” would not only be important in withstanding the British threat, but in so doing, might provide further leverage for some sort of reconciliation with the British. On June 14, Thomas McKean, the same man who chaired the town meeting in Philadelphia on May 20 demanding the organization of a new government in that colony, introduced a resolution into the Delaware Assembly proposing that a constitutional convention be held to draw up a new frame of government. The resolution also authorized its delegates to the Continental Congress to cooperate in entering into treaties with foreign nations and to pursue other measures for “promoting the liberty, safety, and interests of America.” But the word “independence” was conspicuously absent from the Delaware resolution. Delaware would delay until the middle of August before creating a new government, and as the month of June came to an end, neither the legislature nor the colony’s delegates to the Continental Congress had made a commitment to independence. Like its dominant neighbor to the north, Delaware would remain in the “undecided” column nearly to the end.27
Events in New Jersey moved somewhat more swiftly than those in Delaware. In January 1776, New Jersey dissolved its old legislature and created a new Provincial Congress. There were clear signs that its royal governor, Benjamin Franklin’s son William Franklin (from whom Franklin by this time was wholly estranged), was fast losing favor. The new Provincial Congress, however, did not take any steps to repudiate the instructions issued by the old Assembly in November of 1775 stipulating that the colony’s delegates should not vote in favor of independence. But by June 1776, public opinion in the colony had changed, and when a newly elected Provincial Congress met on June 10, most of its members seemed ready to act. By a vote of 48 to 10 they condemned Governor William Franklin as “an enemy to the liberties of this country,” and voted at the same time to form a new government under a new constitution. Although it would take another two weeks for a formal draft of a new government to be approved, the delegates to the New Jersey Provincial Congress agreed at the outset that the actions of the British had left the colony “in a state of nature.” Once they had admitted to being in that state, it would be virtually impossible for New Jersey’s political leaders to move out of it and back under the authority of an unwritten English constitution.28
Maryland posed a far more difficult problem. Like Pennsylvania, it was a proprietary colony, and for that reason did not have a single representative of the crown such as Virginia’s Lord Dunmore, Massachusetts’ General Gage or New Jersey’s William Franklin to serve as a lightning rod for colonists’ hostility. And whereas Dunmore’s proclamation promising freedom to the slaves of Virginia if they fought on the side of the British served to rally Virginians against the royal government, the proclamation seemed to have the opposite effect in Maryland, causing some of that colony’s leading planters to try even harder to seek reconciliation with the British. On May 15, 1776, the day the Continental Congress adopted the preamble to the resolution asking the colonies to form new governments, Maryland’s delegates to the Congress walked out, claiming they could not legally carry out the Congress’s mandate until the Maryland Provincial Convention issued new instructions telling them how to proceed “upon this alarming occasion.” The Maryland Convention received Congress’s preamble five days later, on May 20, and on May 21 unanimously agreed that there was no need to organize a new government, reaffirming the legitimacy of its own authority and refusing to repudiate that of the king. It then re-elected its delegation to the Continental Congress, reiterated its commitment to reconciliation with Great Britain “on constitutional principles” and, finally, instructed its congressional delegates to continue to adhere to their previous instructions to vote against independence.
When the Continental Congress began debate on Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence, the Maryland delegates found themselves in a vexing situation. Although some of them clearly favored independence, they felt powerless to act until the Maryland Convention, which had adjourned on May 25, altered their instructions. John Adams persistently badgered Samuel Chase, Maryland’s most influential delegate and a strong supporter of independence, to do something about his colony’s recalcitrance, warning him that
if Maryland delayed much longer they would “be left alone.” Responding in part to Adams’s prodding, Chase left for Maryland on June 14 to try to persuade his colony’s political leaders to call their convention back into session and to endorse independence. He evidently succeeded in getting a number of county committees of safety to endorse independence, but on June 21, when the provincial convention met again, its members dug in their heels, ordering the Maryland delegates in Philadelphia to come home to attend the convention, but not to leave Congress before receiving guarantees that the Congress would not vote on the question of independence in their absence. Since Congress had already agreed to take up Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence on July 1, the Maryland delegates found themselves in an even more difficult position.29
On June 24 John Adams once again wrote Chase, who was still in Maryland trying to drum up support for independence. Beginning with the plea “Don’t be angry with me,” Adams nevertheless went on to tell Chase that it was out of the question for the Congress to delay its July 1 discussion of independence until Maryland got its act together. Such a delay, Adams insisted, “would hazard Convulsions and dangerous Conspiracies.” Adams was plainly annoyed with the Maryland legislature’s procrastination, but as annoyed as he may have been, Maryland’s delegates to the Continental Congress were even more so. Most of them were committed to voting in favor of independence, but they faced the prospect of going into the crucial debate on July 1 having to sit on their hands, with their colony still very much in the “undecided column.”30
And then there was New York, which from the moment the First Continental Congress convened in September 1774, had tried to put the brakes on any actions that might lead to a break with the mother country. New York’s established ruling elite, like that in Pennsylvania, had supported the idea of a Continental Congress as a means of quieting some of the more radical, popular voices in the wake of the passage of the Coercive Acts. Even more than in Pennsylvania, the politics of New York—both in and out of doors—had been driven by division between radical political organizers of the same bent of mind as Boston’s Sam Adams, such as Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougall, and by more conservative members of the traditional ruling elite—men like John Jay, James Duane and members of the Livingston family. Whereas in Pennsylvania the Assembly continued to be the colony’s official legislative body right up until its adjournment on June 14, 1776, the New York Assembly gave way to an extra-legal Provincial Congress in April of 1775 at nearly precisely the moment of the outbreak of war at Lexington and Concord. Conservative politicians in New York, although nervous, had supported that move, and as a consequence, they maintained their control over the Provincial Congress, and, therefore, their control over the selection of delegates to the Continental Congress. But even more than in Pennsylvania, radical insurgents led by men like Sears and McDougall constantly posed a threat to the political dominance of New York’s traditional ruling elite. The existence of a wealthy, powerful minority of landowners sympathetic to the British in New York’s Hudson River valley, further confused the political situation in the colony.31
Most alarming, the British, after being driven from Boston, had decided to make their stand in New York City. General Washington, realizing this, had arrived in New York with a substantial contingent of troops in mid-April, but even Washington was not prepared for what he witnessed on the morning of June 29. As New Yorkers awoke that day they saw forty-five British ships in the harbor, a fleet so massive that one Pennsylvania rifleman who observed the scene declared “that I thought all London was afloat.” And as those ships began to unload thousands of British and Hessian troops on Staten Island, it became clear that the military threat to New York made that of earlier British efforts to subdue Massachusetts pale in comparison.32
Unlike Pennsylvanians like Dickinson, Wilson and Robert Morris, who had greeted, with a mixture of ambivalence and nervousness, the congressional resolution of May 15 calling for the colonies to organize their own governments, New York’s conservative elite quite accurately saw it as an opportunity to strengthen their political control over their colony. (The fact that the radical activists Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougall were temporarily absent from the political scene because they had joined the military effort by serving in the New York militia no doubt gave the elite added incentive to make their move at this time.) Robert Livingston, writing from Philadelphia, commented on the different situations in New York and Pennsylvania in a letter to his son-in-law, John Jay, on May 17. He noted that the May 15 resolution had occasioned “great alarm” among many of the Pennsylvanians, who “are very fearful of its being attended with many ill consequences next week when the Assembly are to meet”—a fear that, as things turned out, was wholly justifiable. Livingston was sufficiently apprehensive about the consequences of a change in government in New York that he asked Jay (who had absented himself from the Continental Congress and was serving in the Provincial Congress in order to keep in control of things there) to keep constantly in touch with him should he need to come back to New York to help influence the course of events. But he seemed confident that “our people,” by which he meant the established ruling elite of his colony, were “satisfied of the necessity of assuming a new form of Government.” Jay, like Livingston, still hoping for reconciliation rather than independence, emphatically agreed with Livingston on the need for a new government in New York: the present one, he believed, was badly flawed, and “will no longer work anything but mischief.”33
But as was the case in Pennsylvania, New York’s ruling elite, whatever its dominance within its Provincial Congress and within its delegation to the Continental Congress, would find it more and more difficult to resist popular pressure for an endorsement of independence. On June 8, the first day of debate over Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence, four of New York’s delegates sent an urgent letter to the New York Provincial Congress informing them that “the question of independence will very shortly be agitated.” Since at least some of the New York delegates considered themselves “as bound by our instructions not to vote on that question,” and since “the matter will admit of no delay,” they pleaded with their colleagues back home to send them new instructions. Their letter reached New York two days later, but members of the Provincial Congress simply procrastinated. On June 11, John Jay introduced a set of resolutions into that body attempting to slow things down even further. The resolutions were extraordinarily convoluted, perhaps purposely so. The first reminded the New York delegates to the Continental Congress that they were not authorized to add New York’s endorsement to the resolution for independence. The second resolution informed the delegates that since the “good people” of New York had not yet made their sentiments on that great subject known, it would not be possible for the Provincial Congress to change its instructions to the delegates on that subject. In what must have been an infuriating bit of obfuscation to at least some of New York’s delegates to the Continental Congress, the resolutions then informed the delegates that “it would be imprudent to inquire into the sentiments of the people relative to the question of independence, lest it should create division.” In other words, the Provincial Congress was unwilling to authorize the delegates to vote for independence until they had been given authorization to do so by the good people of the colony, but the Congress was at this point not willing to take steps to discern what popular opinion on that all-important question might be. The resolutions ended with what could hardly have seemed much of a consolation: namely that the Provincial Congress would try to discern the “sentiments of the people of this colony” at “the earliest opportunity.”34
Truly, Jay and his conservative New York colleagues had created a Catch-22 situation for the advocates of independence. They insisted that the only true authority for authorizing independence should come from the people themselves, but at the same time said that it would be “inconvenient” for the people’s voice to be consulted. And there things would stand until the
reopening of debate on Lee’s resolution on July 1. The New York delegation to the Congress was left to sit on its hands all through the remainder of the month of June.
On June 29, South Carolina’s Edward Rutledge, still emphatically opposing independence, wrote an urgent letter to John Jay, pleading with him to return to Philadelphia to be present for the debate on independence that would take place two days later. Acknowledging that Jay was doing important business in New York in keeping the advocates of independence at bay, he nevertheless was convinced that Jay’s attendance in Philadelphia would be absolutely necessary if the rising tide toward independence was to be turned back. “Whether we shall be able effectually to oppose [independence],” Rutledge wrote, “will depend in a great Measure upon the Exertions of the Honest and sensible part of the Members.” Most of the New York delegates present at the Congress at that moment, Rutledge observed, “never quit their Chairs,” and were not up to the task of effectively arguing against independence. “You must know the Importance of these Questions too well not to wish to be present,” Rutledge pleaded. For Rutledge, the voices of prominent, respectable members of the traditional ruling elite such as John Dickinson and John Jay were the only hope for those who wanted to turn back that tide of opinion favoring independence. Clearly, that tide was rising, but Rutledge still believed that the voices of a few influential delegates might be sufficient to turn it back.35
TWENTY-THREE
“THE GREATEST DEBATE OF ALL”
THE FIRST FOUR days of July 1776 would prove not only to be among the most significant in all of American history, but in the history of the Western world. The Americans’ decision for independence, and their subsequent defense of that action in the Declaration of Independence, would set in motion a string of ideas—that of political self-determination, of the people as the ultimate source of government power and, perhaps most important, of the fundamental equality of all of mankind—that continues to play out even today.
Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor Page 44
