Independence (36 page)

John Dickinson had been missing in action since the late-summer recess. In September he moved upstairs in the Pennsylvania State House to the chamber where the Pennsylvania assembly met and remained engrossed in its transactions until November. Pennsylvania's legislature wrestled with crucial questions ranging from defense issues to the civil and religious rights of Quakers in wartime, and Dickinson may have believed—with some justification—that Congress would do nothing drastic before it learned of the king's response to the Olive Branch Petition. He withdrew from some of his congressional committees, and there is no record that he was an active participant in any of Congress's debates that fall. However, when Congress authorized New Hampshire to create its own government, Dickinson became a player once again.
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He helped to write new instructions from the Pennsylvania assembly in which he sat to the colony's congressional delegation, on which he also served. The congressmen were “strictly enjoin[ed]” to “dissent from and utterly reject any propositions … that may cause or lead to a Separation from our Mother Country.” The task of Pennsylvania's representatives in Congress, the message continued, was to obtain “Redress of American Grievances” and restore “Union & Harmony” with Great Britain. Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey quickly adopted similar instructions to their congressmen. But when New Jersey considered sending its own olive branch petition to the Crown, Dickinson, accompanied by two other congressmen—John Jay and George Wythe—hurried to Burlington and addressed the assembly. Dickinson took the position that a petition from an individual colony would only further persuade North's ministry that the colonists were hopelessly divided, leading it to fight harder and spurn reconciliation. The New Jersey legislators backed down.
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The year was speeding to a close. Great events and important changes had occurred since the eruption of hostilities seven months earlier, but the future remained clouded. Some delegates from the mid-Atlantic provinces continued to believe that most Americans yearned to remain tied to the mother country. The “people call out for reconciliation,” said Robert Morris, a newcomer to the Pennsylvania delegation. A New York delegate, John Alsop, concurred: The “people … are intirely against … independency but ardently wish [for] a reconciliation free from Taxation.” Franklin might have agreed that a considerable number of his fellow Pennsylvanians longed to be reconciled with London, but he accurately predicted that Great Britain would continue fighting until it aroused the “enmity, hatred, and detestation” of nearly every American for all things British. Thomas Jefferson shared Franklin's assessment. Unless George III offered meaningful concessions, Jefferson prophesied, the monarch would “undo his empire.” Americans would never again “crouch under his hand and kiss the rod with which he deigns to scourge us.” Jefferson added that after taking up arms “there is but one step more” left to the colonists—to declare independence. He closed with his own prediction: The coming year, 1776, “will probably decide everlastingly our future.”
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CHAPTER 8

“T
HE
F
OLLY AND
M
ADNESS OF THE
M
INISTRY
”

C
HARLES
J
AMES
F
OX,
T
HOMAS
P
AINE, AND THE
W
AR

GEORGE III READ HIS ADDRESS
to Parliament on October 26 and in a matter of minutes was on his way back to St. James's Palace. Even as the monarch's carriage clattered through London's streets, the two houses of Parliament met separately and debated their response to what he had said. There was never a chance that the opposition could repudiate the king's bellicose stand. Most members of Parliament believed the war would be short, not lasting beyond the campaign of 1776, and they were confident that victory was assured. Nevertheless, the debates were spirited and lasted for two days. As word of Lexington and Concord had arrived just hours after Parliament's session ended in May, this was the first opportunity to discuss the American crisis since the outbreak of hostilities. Several opposition MPs wished to reopen the issue of the use of force and to consider alternatives to the government's approach to the crisis.

As the king had declared war, it was more difficult than ever for the opposition to raise objections to the government's American policies. But if ever there was a moment for those who disliked the resort to force to unite behind a different approach, the moment had arrived. Two factions opposed to the majority in power had long existed in Parliament: those who coalesced around the Marquis of Rockingham and those who were satellites of the Earl of Chatham. But the two contingents were divided over domestic policies. Moreover, rancorous personal feuds and jealousies got in the way of their unification. Even with regard to Anglo-American differences, the two were at odds over the exercise of parliamentary supremacy. In the end, the two opposition groups failed to present a united front against the king and his prime minister. But even had they combined, their union likely would have been ineffectual. Like North and his followers, not even the best and brightest among the government's critics appeared capable of the unorthodox thinking that might have led to a peaceful solution to the imperial crisis.
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Foes of the war were vocal and passionate. Some blasted North's government for taking the country into an unnecessary conflict. The prime minister's plan for dealing with America was “butchery” plain and simple, said Henry Conway. John Wilkes savaged the cabinet for having pursued policies that had dragged “the nation into an unjust, ruinous, felonious, and murderous war.” Other critics forecast that hostilities would end badly for Great Britian. It would result in “ruinous consequences,” said one, in “ruin and destruction, … grief and horror,” said another. Many in the opposition predicted that Great Britain could not achieve “unconditional submission of a country infinitely more extended than our own.” Colonel Isaac Barré forecast that if the war continued, “the whole American continent was lost for ever.” The solution to the American woes that was most frequently recommended by the ministry's adversaries was the immediate repeal of all American legislation passed by Parliament since 1763.
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Three speeches were notable. The Duke of Grafton created a sensation by breaking with the government. Rail-thin and with a long, hooked nose, Grafton was a former prime minister—his government had enacted the Townshend Duties—who had accepted the position of Lord Privy Seal in North's cabinet in 1771. He took on the assignment because he believed his experience would prove useful in leading North to a solution of the American problem. But by the fall of 1775 Grafton not only was disappointed with North; he also probably divined that he was about to be forced from the ministry so that his post could be given to Dartmouth. Grafton opened his speech by claiming to have been deceived by North's policies. He had thought North meant to pursue conciliation, when in fact the prime minister had adopted one war measure after another throughout the recent summer, a course that would send government and country “headlong on their own ruin.” If Grafton presumed his remarks might be his swan song, he was correct. The king soon thereafter ordered his removal from the ministry.
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Lord Shelburne gained notice by raising a new and crucial point. Shelburne wondered why the king had not addressed the Olive Branch Petition. The American Congress had not threatened independence, he pointed out. In fact, it had almost pleaded with London to open negotiations leading to peace. Congress's entreaty, he said, offered the best “opportunity … of extricating this country from the ruinous situation in which the folly of [North's] administration has involved us.”
4

A speech by Charles James Fox criticizing North's government garnered the greatest attention, partly because he was unsurpassed as an orator, but also because to this point he had never defended the American dissidents. In fact, Fox had been almost entirely silent on the American question before the fall of 1775.

Brilliant and rakish, Fox had entered Parliament when he was only nineteen years old. By then, he had attended Eton and Oxford, lived on the continent for more than two years, and become fluent in French and Italian. Born to wealth and influence—his father had served as a secretary at war—Fox had inherited one hundred thousand pounds, a prodigious fortune, which over the years he supplemented with sinecures worth thousands annually. At times, he appeared bent on spending his fortune in record time. A bachelor when he came to London to take his seat in the House of Commons—he did not marry until he was forty-five years old, and wed only after a ten-year courtship—Fox soon earned a reputation as an “egregious coxcomb” and a “prodigious dandy.” He wore tight-fitting and outlandishly cut clothing, a style that Londoners called the “Macaroni.” Fox's standing as a boulevardier was not derived from good looks. He was heavyset with a swarthy complexion, long black hair, a perpetually heavy beard, and massive, unbroken sable brows that gained him the nickname “the Eyebrow.”

His status as a carefree ladies' man paled next to his repute for gambling. The Earl of Carlisle, a friend, noted that Fox “was incapable … of any restraint when the gratification of his appetites were concerned,” and that was especially true of his compulsion to test his luck. Many nights he sat down to play whist, piquet, or baccarat and remained at the gaming table until past sunset the following evening. (Told once in these years that his son might marry, Fox's father allegedly quipped that nuptials meant there was at last a possibility of Charles's going to bed for one night.) Fox, like many gamblers, wore a mask to hide his emotions while wagering and a broad-brimmed straw hat embellished with ribbons and flowers. He played for high stakes. The wager on some hands was as much as ten thousand pounds. On one occasion, he and his brother lost thirty-two thousand pounds in three nights. One friend in the House of Commons estimated that on occasion Fox lost five hundred pounds an hour when he gambled. Nor was he drawn solely to the gaming table. Fox visited the track on a regular basis and eventually invested in a string of racehorses.
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But Fox's standing as a political figure soon overshadowed the tattle about his personal habits. As a student, Fox had been thought the most gifted speaker in his class, and during his first five years in the Commons he spoke 254 times. Only eight of his colleagues spoke more frequently. His speeches were seldom prepared in advance, and many were delivered following a night with little or no sleep. But this precocious young man took on the giants of his time and held his own, a talent that astounded veteran politicians. While Fox was an adroit speechmaker, he was nearly unequaled in the give and take of a debate. A contemporary exclaimed that many spectators who watched as he debated “all off-hand” found his performances “a most extraordinary thing.” One of his biographers wrote that Fox “in unprepared arguments … transcended any speaker in the history of Parliament.” Edmund Burke concurred, noting that Fox “rose by slow degrees to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater that the world ever saw.”
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Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox by Thomas Hickey. Members of the House of Commons, Burke and Fox were the foremost critics of the government's policy of coercion and force. They insisted that ministerial policy would drive the colonists to declare independence. (National Gallery of Ireland)

Fox launched his career as a Tory. He served North well in his initial years and was rewarded with seats on the Admiralty and Treasury boards. Some thought he might have been brought into the ministry had it not been for his youth. (Fox did not reach his majority until four days after North became the prime minister.) But in 1772 Fox broke with the government over a series of domestic issues and resigned from the Admiralty Board. “Charles Fox is turned patriot and is already attempting to pronounce the words ‘country,' ‘liberty,' ‘corruption,' with what success time will discover,” Edward Gibbon noted happily as his young colleague commenced his transition to Whiggism. If the Whigs were delighted by Fox's apostasy, George III was outraged. The king told the prime minister that “the Young Man has so thoroughly cast off every principle of common honor and honesty that he must become as contemptible as he is odious.” Ever obliging to his monarch, North saw to Fox's removal from his remaining government post. In dismissing Fox from the Treasury Board, North informed him of the decision in a scornful note: “his Majesty has thought proper to order a new commission of the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not perceive your name.” Fox at first thought he was the victim of a practical joker. When he learned the truth, he was furious, and he concluded that it was unlikely that he would ever be asked to be part of a ministry so long as George III sat on the throne. Furthermore, Fox was estranged from both North's government and the opposition.
7

It was in the midst of this predicament that Fox discovered the American problem. Until 1775 he had been silent when the American debates stirred the Commons. He had not taken a stand during the heated battles over the Coercive Acts. He had merely responded to a fellow MP who had framed the issue as a “dilemma of conquering or abandoning America” with the remark, “if we are reduced to that, I am for abandoning America.” Fox remained in the background during the debate on the supposedly conciliatory terms that North offered the colonists in February 1775, only prophesying that “the Americans will reject them with disdain.” Though his criticism of the North Peace Plan was muted, the prime minister publicly responded that Fox was backing the American rebels because of his resentment at having been ousted from the Treasury Board. Fox denied the charge—had his conduct been driven by rancor, he said, he would long ago have revealed instances of North's “unexampled treachery and falsehood”—but on the floor of the Commons, he pledged to join henceforth with Burke to compel the prime minister “to answer [for] the mischiefs occasioned by his negligence, his inconsistency, and his incapacity.” He also shared with all who would listen his newfound conviction that having followed Lord North was “the greatest folly of his life.”
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Fox made good on his pledge to ally with Burke. As a boy, he had known the Irishman, who was twenty years his senior; and when the two became colleagues in the House of Commons, they drew close, forming a warm friendship that seemed to grow from their mutual appreciation of literature and art, not to mention their deep respect for each other as penetrating thinkers and effective politicians. Burke looked on the gifted young man as a pupil and protégé, and he described Fox as “one of the pleasantest men in the world, as well as the greatest Genius that perhaps this country has ever produced.”

Burke's critique of North's policies in 1774 helped shape Fox's thinking about American issues. But whereas Burke took up the cause of America because he understood that North's policies would result in the loss of the colonies and the diminution of British power and prestige, Fox was drawn to the colonists' plight in some measure because of the political opportunities that such a stance might yield.
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In the fall of 1775, in the wake of the king's address, Burke and Fox began to work hand in hand against what they saw as the mad and misguided direction that their country was being taken. They drew on each other's talents. Burke was a spectacular orator. Fox was equally dazzling as a debater. Burke was informed and reasonable. Fox was eloquent, passionate, and biting, and as if wielding “the wand of the magician”—according to one observer—he was able to hold an audience in the palm of his hand.
10
From October 1775 through July 1776, and beyond, Burke and Fox emerged as the strongest voices for the much-outnumbered factions fighting in Parliament against the government's policies toward America.