Patriots

by A. J. Langguth

  Samuel Adams wasn’t limiting himself to one state. He was named the Massachusetts representative to join with a member from each delegation in drawing up a form of government for America. Thomas Jefferson’s committee had been amicable; Adams’ was more rancorous and suspicious. During the month Jefferson had been preparing his Declaration, Samuel Adams, John Dickinson and the other eleven members were trying to patch together a plan for union.

  Two other known opponents of independence served with Dickinson—Robert Livingston of New York and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina. Six others supported the idea of the Declaration but were conservative by temperament or wealth. Two more were simply cautious. As a result, Adams set out to shape the future with reliable support only from Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, who was even older than Adams and was impatient to leave the Congress.

  Since Dickinson was representing Pennsylvania, there was no place on the committee for Benjamin Franklin. But Franklin’s views were already on record; ten years before the Stamp Act, he had drawn up a plan to confederate the British colonies during a conference held in Albany in June 1754. Although the delegates had come to reach an alliance with the Iroquois, they also adopted the ideas Franklin had prepared for their consideration: Parliament would form one government for all of the colonies, with a legislature called the Grand Council and a President-General to supervise its laws. In England, the ministers of George II considered the Grand Council, elected by vote in each colony, too democratic and refused to submit the plan to the king. In America, the assemblies objected to a President-General appointed and paid by the crown and rejected Franklin’s entire concept unanimously.

  Franklin could be patient. Twenty-one years later, in the summer of 1775, he had drafted another version, “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.” Circulating it, Franklin said that his plan was meant merely to start the delegates thinking and that Congress would come up with a more perfect instrument.

  His suggestions, however, were detailed, giving broad powers to an elected assembly from all the colonies. It could declare war and set terms for peace, conduct foreign affairs, operate a postal system. Each state would send delegates to the Congress based on its population of male citizens between the ages of sixteen and sixty, and all delegates would have equal votes. This central government’s expenses would be prorated among the states on the same census of their male population.

  Franklin took his plan from member to member, and Thomas Jefferson was one of those who were enthusiastic about it. But he also heard from those who were outraged. Although Franklin had provided for independence within the British Empire, the conservatives claimed that his plan proved that Franklin didn’t want to reconcile with Britain on any terms. Franklin decided that his blueprint would only antagonize members and laid it aside.

  But now another eleven months had passed, and the mood in Philadelphia was different. John Dickinson and his supporters were resigned to independence, and the objections to a confederation were coming from the other faction. Some delegates had transferred their fear and suspicion of England to their fellow Americans. They detested any central power, whether it was held by Parliament or by a new body created in Philadelphia. Samuel Adams was determined that each state should remain sovereign within its own boundaries. With the people of the states sharing neither a common history nor a common vision of the future, how could there be a strong union? Massachusetts had its own charter, which the patriots revered, and a crown-appointed governor they had despised and run out of the colony. In two neighboring states, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the authority had been less drastically split. They also had charters, but they controlled their own executive branches. Seven other provinces—New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia—had been guided only by traditions and customs rather than by formal constitutions, and they had been headed by governors appointed in England. Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland had been managed by families who held most of the rights and benefits.

  Next came differences in religion and racial stock. Some of Massachusetts’ three hundred thousand residents boasted that their bloodlines were more purely English than those in England itself. Virginia planters, who could not make that claim, wanted to exclude their blacks from any tax census and count them instead as property. The conflicting interests meant that nearly two years after Patrick Henry had proclaimed himself an American, the Congress was again confronting questions of representation and voting.

  John Dickinson drafted a confederation plan for the committee to work from, and the debate over each of its articles was angry and prolonged. After two and a half weeks, young Ned Rutledge was worried that Samuel Adams sought a government controlled by men who lacked a proper regard for money and position. To prevent any vast redistribution of property, Rutledge wanted the states to retain political control. Adams and Rutledge had opposing goals for their states, but they both hoped to keep the union weak and divided.

  Other delegates on Dickinson’s committee were as conservative as Rutledge but saw another danger. They were less worried about the bad example Massachusetts had set than about the democratic movements springing up within their own states. They believed that a strong central government would help to subdue uprisings at home. As the debate ground on, the issue became sharpened. Men who already controlled their states were fighting for a confederation that would perpetuate their control. That drive for power wasn’t limited to the rich. Samuel Adams, who had given much of his life to deposing Bernard and Hutchinson, would never entrust his state’s destiny to men who wanted George Washington as king of a new empire.

  The draft that finally went before the Congress late in August reflected the strains between Samuel Adams and the conservatives and among the conservatives themselves. The first article ratified the title for the new nation: “The name of this confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America.’ ” The second article described the colonies as entering into “a firm league of friendship with each other,” one that would bind them all to join against attacks made on any one of them. That article mollified Samuel Adams by suggesting that the states were combining mainly because of outside threats to their security but remained sovereign powers.

  The rest of Dickinson’s draft ceded substantial power to the Congress. The third article read: “Each Colony shall retain and enjoy as much of its present laws, rights and customs, as it may think fit, and reserves to itself the sole and exclusive regulation and government of its internal police, in all matters that shall not interfere with the Articles of this Confederation.” That language guaranteed a state control only over its own police—and then only if that control didn’t obstruct the Articles. Every other power seemed to pass to the Congress. The one check on that power came in Article 18, but given the past dozen years, it was a potent and emotional one: The government of the United States could not impose or levy taxes on any state, except to support the Post Office.

  Article 17 tersely disposed of the matter of representation: “In determining questions, each colony shall have one vote.” But to protect the larger states, nine votes, not merely a majority of seven, would be required on broad matters of foreign affairs and economic policy—declaring war, entering into treaties, fixing the value of money and coining it, approving a budget for defense. Another source of contention couldn’t be finessed so easily. Six states regarded themselves as “three-sided,” which meant that their citizens considered their western boundaries still open. Basing claims on royal charters or on old Indian treaties, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia all demanded the right to keep on expanding until they reached the Pacific Ocean. On competing maps, the state boundaries crossed and crisscrossed over the disputed territory. Virginia’s northern line overlapped land claimed by four other states. It did no good for critics from the other states to point out that the impasse had arisen out of ignorance, that when some of the original charters were drawn, colonists had guessed
that the Pacific Ocean was about a hundred miles from the Atlantic.

  When the debate over the Articles of Confederation moved from committee to the floor of the Congress, John Adams joined those delegates who assailed Dickinson’s one-state, one-vote provision. Now that his hard work had brought him wealth and eminence, he couldn’t agree that property should count for nothing. But he also shared Samuel Adams’ worries about a strong central government. Only the year before, John Adams had suggested that since uniting an enormous continent under one rule was impracticable, the Congress might consider a loose confederation, along the lines of ancient Greece or modern Switzerland.

  John Adams was enough of a democrat that he regretted that these crucial deliberations were conducted in secret. He wanted galleries built and the doors opened so that people might understand the nature of the debate. When he was overruled, Adams acknowledged that some delegates had been reluctant to reveal how sharply divided they were on issues facing the newly united states. But he was sure most of them simply didn’t want the public to know what insignificant roles they were playing.

  Adams had no such concern. He took on Samuel Chase of Maryland, who argued that slaves shouldn’t be counted during any tax census. Northern farmers invested their profits in livestock, Southerners in slaves, which meant that slaves were simply property. Adams argued that because five hundred freemen produced no greater profit than five hundred slaves, freemen shouldn’t be taxed, either. Benjamin Harrison of Virginia proposed a compromise. Because slaves did only half the work, count two slaves in the census for every freeman. A Pennsylvania delegate noted that while a freeman might work more, he also consumed more, since a slave wasn’t fed or clothed as well, which left Northern colonies with no more surplus money for taxes than the Southerners had.

  Benjamin Franklin, representing Pennsylvania’s three hundred thousand residents, joined John Adams in opposing the one-vote-per-state provision and urged his earlier plan, in which voting, and taxing, would be based on population. The Reverend Witherspoon, who was the president of Princeton College and regularly wore his cap and gown to sessions, spoke for a population of only one hundred thirty thousand and took the other side.

  Neither faction could be convinced, but the small states carried the vote with help from big-state delegates who feared a strong central power. The second article was strengthened to guarantee that the individual states retained all rights and powers not specifically delegated to the United States.

  On the question of the Western claims, Dickinson’s draft had authorized only the central government to deal with Indian tribes and buy land outside the existing state boundaries. John Adams listened disdainfully as Virginia’s delegates opposed the measure; Adams was convinced that avarice for land was delaying any hope of union. Patrick Henry had been an early speculator, and Benjamin Franklin on his return from England had immediately involved himself in an ambitious land scheme.

  The debate over confederation seemed to have no solution. At the end of August, the Congress agreed to put aside the whole question. Ned Rutledge reflected the frustration of most delegates that there was still no union six weeks after independence had been declared. “It is of little consequence if we never see it again,” he wrote to a friend about confederation, “for we have made such a Devil of it already that the colonies can never agree to it.” But lately the delegates had been given a good excuse for deferring a showdown. A letter from George Washington shocked them into remembering that who might someday own the Pacific coast mattered very little compared with the fight for control of the Atlantic.

  —

  Long before the Declaration of Independence, Britain’s commander in America had developed a simple strategy and made no secret of it. General Howe wanted to isolate the rebellious Yankees of New England by taking and holding the line along the Hudson River and Lake Champlain. That would allow the British to pacify the Southern colonies, where, Howe had been assured, most of the people were loyal to the king. He had recommended landing his entire force in New York, securing that town as his base, and then moving north. He had been overruled in London, and part of the British force had been diverted to Canada early in 1776 to meet the American threat there.

  But the Congress in Philadelphia was learning that the British had arrived outside New York’s harbor with warships and hundreds of transport vessels carrying thirty-two thousand professional soldiers. Their commander was General Howe’s brother, Admiral Sir Richard Howe. Britain had sent powerful expeditionary forces in the past, but this was the greatest it had ever launched.

  In the spring of 1776, George Washington had marched his troops down from Boston to meet the expected threat. By recruiting hard, he had scraped together 28,500 men, nineteen thousand fit for duty. His strategy called for a full defense of New York. Even if the British succeeded in taking the town, he hoped for another Breed’s Hill, a victory bought at an exorbitant price. And Congress insisted that New York be defended. Some officers were annoyed that civilians safe in Philadelphia were staking so much on raw recruits of a new army. But John Adams was among those who had no doubts. “Let us drub Howe,” he exhorted the generals, “and then we shall do very well.”

  How the drubbing was to be done was left to General Washington. Meanwhile, the commander had been beleaguered by more spies and traitors within his own ranks. In mid-June two American soldiers, Thomas Hickey and Michael Lynch, had been exposed as members of a secret cadre taking money from the British. Hickey had been jailed on a counterfeit charge, and during his confinement he and Lynch were overheard boasting that they would never fight again for America. They told other inmates that nearly seven hundred of General Washington’s men had vowed to declare their allegiance to George III and turn their weapons on the Americans when the British arrived. The threat was more alarming because Hickey had served in Washington’s personal guard and claimed that seven other guardsmen were conspiring in the plot.

  A court-martial listened to four witnesses, whose testimony established that Hickey had been paid half a dollar for his treason to America. One rumor wasn’t raised during the trial—that Hickey and Lynch intended to assassinate General Washington with the help of a woman. Mary Gibbons was said to be in the general’s confidence—whatever that phrase might suggest. If she existed at all, Mrs. Gibbons had disappeared. Even without that charge, the court reached a unanimous guilty verdict. Punishment would be death by hanging. George Washington was proving scrupulous about consulting his fellow generals on policy matters. When he convened a council the next day to review the case, his six brigadiers advised him to uphold the sentence.

  The Congress had authorized death for American soldiers who incited or joined a mutiny. The morning after Hickey’s sentence was confirmed, a gallows was erected, and Washington ordered that all men who weren’t on duty be marched out to watch the hanging. Altogether, twenty thousand people appeared. Hickey refused to see a chaplain because, he said, the clergy were all cutthroats. Shortly before noon he was hanged.

  The next day, an American scanned the horizon at dawn and saw what looked like a forest of trimmed pine trees floating across the water toward New York. They were the masts of the British fleet Thomas Hickey had been waiting for.

  —

  For George Washington’s first test as a tactician, he could hardly have been handed a worse battlefield. Everything about the New York harbor favored a navy, and Britain’s oceangoing ships could navigate far enough up the Hudson River to carry out Howe’s plan and cut the colonies in two. Between the Hudson and East Rivers lay Manhattan Island. Surveying it, Washington saw that it was too long for his troops to defend. But if he stationed men at its southern tip in New York, the Howe brothers could land their troops above the town and trap the American Army between British gunboats and British bayonets.

  His victory on Dorchester Heights had convinced Washington to try for the high ground. Across the East River on Long Island, Brooklyn Heights rose up enough to command the southern tip of Manh
attan. Washington made two major decisions: He would defend New York from positions nearest the enemy. And he would split his forces. Some would stay in Manhattan, others would be sent to hold Brooklyn Heights.

  On July 3, 1776, more than nine thousand British soldiers were ferried from their ships and landed on Staten Island. On the day Congress was approving the Declaration, George Washington had waited tensely for General Howe to try to take New York. Twenty-four hours later, it had become clear that the British intended to dig in and wait. July 9 marked the anniversary of Washington’s first council of war in Cambridge, and during that year he had not fought a single battle. Any day he expected General Howe to revenge himself for those lost twelve months.

  Washington hoped that hearing the Declaration of Independence would give his men fresh incentive, and he ordered it read aloud on the ninth. That evening, local Sons of Liberty attacked the statue of George III in Bowling Green that John Adams had admired as he passed through New York two years earlier. The king had been portrayed as a Roman emperor and cast one-third larger than life from two tons of lead covered with gold leaf. Since its pedestal stood fifteen feet high, the Sons had to tie ropes to the king and his horse and pull the statue to the ground. The fall knocked off the king’s head, which loyalists later obtained and shipped to London. The great mass of lead went to Connecticut, where munitions-makers calculated that it could be melted and molded into 42,088 bullets.