American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  * * *

  At the end of April, Lydia Hancock died in Fairfield after suffering a stroke. When he received the news a few days later, John was heartbroken. He had been “the object of her fondest affection on this side of heaven.”22 She had been for him his staunchest defender, tenderest caretaker, and most devoted counselor. Without Lydia, he might never have been taken in by his uncle Thomas or given the education and opportunities that he had; he might not have married Dorothy Quincy, or become a leading advocate for colonists’ rights, or been elected to serve the people of Massachusetts. John knew all this better than anyone, and his tears mixed with gratitude in thinking of his seemingly unstoppable and indefatigable aunt.

  In her will, Lydia finally did what Hancock had been urging her to do for years: she freed her slaves, and left them money to begin their new lives. She also left a bit of money to friends and a small donation to the Brattle Square Church. But the rest of her estate was left to John.

  Dolly promised her husband that if the new baby they were expecting was a girl, she would be named for Aunt Lydia. And when the times allowed, she and her husband would travel to Fairfield and visit the grave; but almost sixteen years would pass before a marker was laid there, commemorating the life of Lydia Henchman Hancock.

  * * *

  The momentum for independence in the middle and southern colonies continued to build, as news filtered out to towns and villages of England’s intent to close the seas to all colonial vessels (thereby threatening to destroy all trade that was the lifeblood of port towns up and down the coast). Rumors of the thousands of mercenaries the Crown had contracted with to fight against its own subjects also galvanized support for separation, as did the knowledge that if independence was declared by the Americans, France was sure to support the new country in its fight.

  John Adams was heartened by the growing tide of support. “The Passion, Feeling, Sentiment, Principle and Imagination, were never in more lively Exercise than they are now, from Florida to Canada,” he wrote to Abigail.

  Knowing that she was longing “to hear you have declared an independency,” he promised her, “We are hastening rapidly to great Events.… Governments will be up everywhere before Midsummer, and an End to Royal style, Titles, and Authority.”23

  To push the creation of provincial governments further along, John Adams proposed a resolution in Congress urging the colonies to form their own independent governments as quickly as possible, in order to “promote the Happiness of the People.”24

  In the preamble to his proposed resolution, Adams argued that the nature of England’s oppression, the failure of the king to protect his colonies from such oppression, and indeed, the forces called out by the king to enforce the oppressions, indicated that the time had come: “Every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed, and all the powers of government [should be] exerted under the authority of the people of the colonies.”25

  Congress approved the resolution, together with its preamble. John wrote with exultation to Abigail that now there would be a “complete Separation, a total Independence, not only [from] Parliament, but [from the] Crown.”26

  And yet John knew that for all its voting for and approving of various steps toward independence, Congress had yet to reach the point of unanimous support for a declaration of independence. He noted in his journal that James Duane of New York had called his resolution “a Machine for the fabrication of Independence.” John knew he was right, but independence would truly be proclaimed only when “We must have it with more formality,”27 in both a resolution for independence and a declaration setting forth the reasons for it.

  Pennsylvania, with John Dickinson leading the way, was sure to vote against any proposed resolution for independence, and Adams couldn’t be sure of Delaware, Maryland, or New York (whose delegates were personally all for independence but who could not vote for it without explicit authority granted to them from their provincial assembly). South Carolina had led the South in creating its provincial government and promoting separation from England, but would its delegates follow through with a vote for independence? In his letters to Abigail, John feigned certainty, but in private and on his own, he worried.

  Two weeks later, on June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia submitted a resolution to Congress. He could wait no longer, he told John Adams; the time had come to vote on independence from England.

  Invited to the dais by John Hancock, Lee stood silent for a moment, surveying the room. He was a slim man, always elegantly dressed. His left hand was usually wrapped in a black cloth to hide its disfigurement; he had lost all his fingers on that hand in a riding accident. But this morning, both hands were free. With his right hand, he held the resolution he had prepared, while his left hand he held over his heart.

  Sure of the attention of all, Lee read his resolution aloud: “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”28

  John Adams immediately rose to second the resolution, and debate was scheduled to begin the next day, a Saturday. For two days the arguments went back and forth, with John Dickinson proclaiming that the people “were not yet ripe for bidding adieu to [the] British connection” and John Adams responding, “The people wait for us to lead the way.”29

  Delegates asked for time to return home and confer with their people there; an agreement was reached to consider the resolution again on July 1. Thomas Jefferson and four others, including John Adams, were appointed to a committee to prepare a written declaration in time for the July 1 meeting, laying out the reasons why the united American colonies sought separation from England. The resolution and the declaration could then be considered together by Congress.

  * * *

  Representatives from the Iroquois Confederacy were present during many of the congressional debates that occurred during May and early June of 1776. The Native Americans had been invited to see for themselves how the American colonists governed in the wake of the dissolution of British control. Concerns had been raised on the part of the Iroquois as to the role of “president” in such proceedings; within their own administrative and political structure, the Iroquois Confederacy used two branches of legislative power, but there was no third branch with an executory role.

  The Native Americans were lodged on the second floor of the State House, making it easy for them to attend the various proceedings in Congress. They paid special attention to John Hancock, watching how he maneuvered within Congress, when he stepped in and when he stepped back again.

  On June 11, as their sojourn in Philadelphia was drawing to a close, a number of Iroquois chiefs were invited to a ceremony held by Congress in their honor. Colonial delegates made speeches in which they promised continued friendship with the Native Americans. When Hancock rose to offer official goodbyes, he was surprised by a request made by an Onondaga chief, that he be allowed to give Hancock an Indian name. John Hancock was then adopted into the Iroquois Confederacy under the name Karanduawn, meaning “the Great Tree.”30

  * * *

  On that same day, Thomas Jefferson set to work drafting the Declaration of Independence. In the days since Congress had recessed, he had met with the four other men chosen with him to draft the declaration, and it quickly became evident that the task would not be shared among them. Ben Franklin was feeling too ill-disposed to work on a draft, and as he later revealed to Jefferson, “I have made it a rule, whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body.”31

  Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York also declined to write the declaration, so Jefferson turned to Adams.

  John Adams knew that a text produced by a Southerner like Jefferson would be more likely to be approved than one coming from (what many still perceived as) the radical fringe of N
ew England. John was also confident that Jefferson would write a persuasive and eloquent exposition on the whys and wherefores of independence. He told Jefferson that while he would happily offer comments on whatever Jefferson produced, he would leave the writing of the document up to him. Jefferson agreed to take on the project by himself.

  Adams was tempted to visit the younger man as he worked but he hung back. He left Jefferson alone in his rooms on Market and Seventh, writing away on the small lap desk he’d had specially made. While Adams waited to see what the Virginian came up with, he kept himself busy with a variety of committees, all needing his attention. He also churned out a record number of letters, including one to Abigail, in which he cryptically revealed, “Great Things are on the Tapis”—a kind of slang for something big is about to happen.32

  By June 13, Jefferson had a completed draft for Adams to read. Composed of twenty-four paragraphs—many of them bullet points listing the wrongs committed against the Americans—and close to two thousand words, it was as passionate a work of patriotism, spirit, and determination as Josiah Quincy Jr. himself might have turned out. Adams reckoned that Josiah—or any New Englander—might have put more God into the text, but he was not disappointed with Jefferson’s work. “I was delighted with its high tone, and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning negro slavery, which though I knew his southern brethren would never suffer to pass in congress, I certainly never would oppose.”33

  The paragraph Adams referred to was one in which Jefferson had put some of his most angry rhetoric; so much of the text was passionate, with Jefferson listing in detail allegation after allegation of abuse committed by the Crown and Parliament. But in the paragraph on slavery, Jefferson went even further. He denounced King George for having “waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.”34

  Not only had King George brought, through forcible violence, unwilling workers to America, but “he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”35

  It was this paragraph on slavery—with its “most Manly Sentiments,” as she termed it—that would please Abigail so much when she read it, copied in John’s hand; he’d written the entire declaration out for her and sent it for her perusal.36 She thought John had written it himself and was so proud of her husband.

  She felt her hopes rise, as pride in her husband swelled. Perhaps the time had come when what Abigail had long dreamed of would finally arise: a country ruled by the “generous and christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us.”37 A world of independence for all.

  33

  The Signature of Independence

  The set time is come wherein Providence

  has appointed the Flourishing States

  to withdraw themselves from the Control of all others.

  —EDMUND QUINCY IV

  Congress began meeting again on July 1, 1776. By the end of that first day, John Hancock felt both tired and hopeful. He waited in his president’s chair as the chamber emptied out. Only the secretary of the Congress, Charles Thomson, remained, and he would soon leave after sorting through his notes. John looked down at the document that lay on the table before him.

  It had been another very warm day, with temperatures outside reaching well into the nineties. With the windows kept closed to preserve the secrecy of congressional debates, the chamber had been sweltering during the day. But as the afternoon wore on, the skies had filled with dark clouds—so dark that candles were lit in the room.

  During John Dickinson’s long harangue against independence, the sun had beat hard against the windows, but when John Adams began his defense of Lee’s Resolution for Independence, the clouds began to roll in. As he went on and on with his arguments, speaking not from any notes but from his heart and mind, the thunder had joined in, punctuating his points.

  While Dickinson had pointed out the dangers of independence, Adams instead underscored its necessity. Richard Stockton from New Jersey, who arrived late and asked Adams to begin again—which he did—pronounced Adams in his oratory to be “the Atlas of American independence.” Thomas Jefferson lauded Adams as the “ablest advocate and defender” of independence; and a southern delegate, in describing Adams’ performance that afternoon, said it was if “an angel was let down from heaven to illumine Congress.”1

  For nine hours the debate on the Resolution for Independence had continued. When it came time to vote, John Rutledge from South Carolina rose up from his seat and asked for a postponement until the next day. Hancock polled the delegates, and all agreed to wait a day before voting on the resolution. Hancock adjourned Congress until the next morning.

  With the delegates gone, the windows to the chamber had finally been opened and cooling breezes were coming in, along with the occasional slap of moisture from the rain pouring outside. Hancock again looked down at Richard Henry Lee’s resolution. By now most every member of Congress knew the words by heart: “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”

  Hancock wasn’t worried about Lee’s resolution. After Adams’ oration, he was certain that the delegates would, in the end, vote for it. But he had heard rumors of last-minute dealmaking among the delegates to make changes to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Hancock had read it, as had all the delegates. He approved of every bit of it; Jefferson had done a magnificent job laying out in clear terms the reasons why America was declaring itself a new nation.

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness.… When a long train of abuses & usurpations … evinces a design to reduce the people to absolute despotism it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, & to provide new guards for their future security.… The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.”2

  There would be few who could argue with the power of Jefferson’s words. But what about his angry paragraph denouncing King George for imposition of the slave trade: Would the southern colonies back out at the last minute from voting for independence? And if the paragraph were taken out to secure necessary votes, would the new country of America become complicit in slavery, even as it fought for freedom?

  Hancock rose from his seat and left the chamber, leaving the resolution on the desk but carrying his notes on Jefferson’s declaration home with him. Walking the few blocks to his rooms on Arch and Fourth, he was impervious to the rain, his mind taken up with thoughts of tomorrow.

  The next morning John Adams woke early. He heard the rain outside the windows. He hurried from his bedsheets and dressed quickly, deciding to forego breakfast at the tavern across the street. Today the vote on Lee’s Resolution for Independence would be taken. He couldn’t get to the State House fast enough.

  By eleven in the morning, the business of Congress had turned to Lee’s resolution. Colony by colony, Charles Thomson called on the delegates to make their vote, which he then recorded. Adams rested easy during the calling on Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Virginia: he knew all those delegates would vote for independence. Maryland voted for independence, as did New Jersey, while New York’s delegates were forced by their circumstances to abstain, as they were still awaiting formal approval from the New York Assembly back home.

  When it was Delaware’s turn, Adams
was surprised to see that the delegate Caesar Rodney was in attendance; he’d been absent for weeks, but now here he was. His clothes were damp, even more so than John’s or the other delegates who had scurried through rainy streets to arrive at the State House.

  The story passed down the aisle: Rodney had ridden on horseback, covering sixty miles in twelve hours, in the dark and in the rain, to arrive in Philadelphia in time to vote. The “oddest-looking Man in the World” (as Adams described him) joined his fellow delegate, Thomas McKean, in voting for independence.3

  Another surprise came when Pennsylvania was called upon. John Dickinson and Robert Morris had both decided to abstain from the vote. Pennsylvania approved the resolution, with its three remaining delegates—Ben Franklin, James Wilson, and John Morton—voting for independence.

  When it came time for the southernmost colonies to vote, John Adams found the breath in his lungs contracting. His hands fidgeted in his lap and his left heel tapped on the floor. John Hancock sat motionless on the dais, to the side of Secretary Thomson. Adams and Hancock did not look at each other, or at the delegates from the South. Instead they kept their eyes riveted on Thomson as he called the name of the delegates from each of the three southern colonies.

  All three of the Georgia delegates in attendance voted for independence, as did the two delegates present from North Carolina. All four delegates for South Carolina voted for independence as well, although the evening before Rutledge had seemed to be leaning the other way.