Independence (57 page)

The speech had gone on and on, probably lasting past two o'clock. The congressional chamber had grown even more intolerably hot as Dickinson's oration wound to a climax with a warning that the “Book of Fate” portended a “dreadful” future for an independent America.
12

Dickinson had hardly taken his seat before Adams was on his feet. He had not prepared a speech or even scribbled notes for his talk. They were not needed; he had made these same arguments many times. Adams may not have been Dickinson's equal as an orator, for Dickinson was nearly as good as they came. But there was a studied expertise to Adams's talents as a public speaker, honed before countless juries and in innumerable presentations in Congress. Jefferson once remembered that a typical Adams speech was composed of “deep conceptions, nervous style, and undaunted firmness.”
13
On this day, in this speech, Adams summoned all his powers of oratory and delivered a superb address.

No record of Adams's speech has survived, but he must have answered each objection to independence that Dickinson had raised. If the speech resembled his correspondence of recent months—not to mention the compendium of London's abominable behavior contained in Jefferson's draft declaration—Adams probably described in detail the British policies and actions that had driven America to independence. There can be no question that Adams argued that the harsh realities of war left America no choice but to declare independence. Nor is it likely that he minimized the “Calamities” that America would confront during the long “bloody Conflict We are destined to endure,” as he remarked in a missive written just after that day's session concluded.

Whereas Dickinson had emphasized the potential dangers that independence might bring on, Adams almost certainly accentuated the benefits that would accrue from breaking with the mother country. Nothing had ever been more important to Adams than the opportunities for ambitious individuals. Above all, he believed that by escaping Great Britain's fetters, talented Americans would have the chance to attain the highest reaches of political power. He knew, too, that independence would better provide the means by which Americans—individuals and powerful economic interests alike—might control their destiny. He may even have sounded somewhat like Thomas Paine, who had asserted that independence offered the promise of better things than could ever be hoped for by Anglo-Americans within the British Empire. “Freedom is a Counterballance for Poverty, Discord, and War, and more,” Adams wrote that night, and he likely expanded on that deep-seated conviction in his speech.
14

Adams's speech was probably as long as, or longer than, Dickinson's. As the afternoon wore on, the puffy white clouds of morning gave way to low, gray scudding clouds, then to angry black thunderheads. In time the thunder, at first distant and muted, grew steadily louder. An hour or so into Adams's speech, Philadelphia grew very dark, as if night was approaching. Candles were lit. Soon, lightning was on top of the city and the thunder was as deafening as a nearby artillery barrage. For a minute or two, large drops of rain splattered loudly on the tall windows. Then, sheets of rain lashed the city.

Adams and his listeners were not distracted. Adams paused only once, when the door to Congress's chamber opened and four of the five newly chosen New Jersey delegates—all freshly authorized to vote for independence—entered. One of them, Richard Stockton, asked Adams to summarize what he had previously said. Adams obliged. Then he pushed forward. Finally, near Congress's customary four P.M. adjournment time, Adams brought his speech to a conclusion. Perhaps no one could have answered Dickinson with a finer speech. Jefferson later said that Adams was the “pillar” in support of independence, “its ablest advocate and defender.” Stockton was enthralled with the “force of his reasoning” and subsequently called Adams “the Atlas of American independence.” A Southerner exclaimed that he “fancied an angel was let down from heaven to illumine Congress.”
15

Congress might as well have voted on independence when Adams sat down. Little could be added to what he and Dickinson had already said. But each delegate sensed that he was face-to-face with the pivotal moment of his public life. Nearly every member of Congress wanted to speak, to have the satisfaction of having said something on this historic occasion. Each must have hoped that what he said would be memorable. The thunderstorm had cooled the air. The room was now more bearable. One delegate after another took the floor. Jefferson later recalled that the entire debate had lasted for nine hours. Hour after hour “without a pause,” he said, the delegates spoke, many with such passion that they summoned all the “powers of the soul” in their calls for independence or their entreaties not to break with the mother country. Night was gathering over the city when the last speaker uttered the last word to an utterly spent and famished audience.
16

The time had come to vote on independence. Two votes were necessary. A vote was needed to favorably recommend the question from the committee of the whole. If that vote carried, Congress would then cast the decisive vote.

Everyone expected the measure for independence to carry, but no one knew for certain by what margin. New York's delegation, having not been instructed by the provincial authorities, would abstain. Most doubted that Delaware would cast a ballot. As Caesar Rodney was at home in Kent County, only two of the province's three deputies were present and they differed in outlook. Thomas McKean was a clear-cut supporter of independence. George Read, a cautious forty-two-year-old lawyer, was not. Some of Read's congressional colleagues had been whispering that he was “better fitted for the district of
St. James's
[in England] than the [Delaware] region of
America
.”
17
McKean and Read were expected to negate each other's vote, so that Delaware would not cast a ballot on this crucial question.

Most thought that Pennsylvania would vote against sending the question of independence to Congress for a vote. Among its seven delegates, only Franklin and John Morton, the speaker of the late provincial assembly, had never wavered on breaking with Great Britain. James Wilson was a question mark, but the four remaining congressmen—Willing, Morris, Dickinson, and Charles Humphreys, an archconservative who had been a follower of Galloway in the assembly after 1763—were seen as foes of independence. Most delegates also regarded South Carolina as a doubtful supporter of independence. Thomas Heyward—he pronounced his name “Haywood”—a thirty-year-old Charleston lawyer who had steadfastly supported cutting all ties with the mother country, was the sole member of South Carolina's delegation who could be counted on by the proponents of independence. (“On him We could always depend for sound Measures, though he seldom spoke in public,” John Adams wrote many years later.)
18
Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Lynch Jr. were not so much opposed to independence as to declaring it at this juncture. The best bet was that the measure would be voted out of committee by a margin of 10–1 or 9–2. Either margin would be short of the unanimous vote that most congressmen believed desirable for a step of such magnitude.

It was nearly dark when the committee of the whole at last voted. The measure carried by a 9–2 vote. New York abstained. Delaware was deadlocked. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against the motion to send the question of independence from the committee of the whole to Congress for the historic vote.

The balloting had gone more or less as most delegates expected. Once the vote was taken, a parliamentary practice was carried out. Harrison stepped down from the dais, and Hancock returned to the president's chair. Harrison reported the outcome of the committee's vote, whereupon Hancock asked whether Congress was ready for the formal vote on independence. Before anything could be done, Rutledge took the floor. He asked that the vote be postponed until the following morning. He told Congress that though “they disapproved of the resolution,” he believed at least two members of South Carolina's delegation would join Heyward “for the sake of unanimity.”
19
The weary and hungry congressmen happily agreed to Rutledge's proposal and adjourned.

American independence would be declared on July 2, that much was certain. John Adams thought the vote would be “by a great Majority,” probably by a margin of “almost Unanimity,” a remark that suggests he expected Pennsylvania to cast a negative vote. Despite Rutledge's assurances, Adams could not be sure how the South Carolina delegation would vote. There was another matter to worry over. The vote had been close in a couple of delegations, close enough to cause Adams to fret that arms might be twisted overnight, or deals struck, that could lead “one or two Gentlemen” to make a turnabout and “vote point blank against the known and declared Sense of their Constituents.”
20

It was still raining in Philadelphia, though more softly, when the delegates awakened on Tuesday morning. They hurried to the State House, splashing through the puddles on the city sidewalks. All delegates were in place when the session was called to order. Congress first listened to and discussed letters from Washington, the Massachusetts assembly, the governor of Connecticut, and the army's paymaster.
21
Though politicians tend to be talkative, it is not likely that the discussion occasioned by these dispatches consumed much time. Most congressmen were probably anxious to resume consideration of independence and, finally, to cast their vote on what must have seemed to them to have been the climax of a trajectory begun long ago.

It was going on eleven A.M. when Congress returned to the recommendation of the committee of the whole that independence be declared. Lee's resolution, which by now must have been committed to memory by many deputies, was read yet again. It is unlikely that any speeches were made. Congress was ready to vote.

Secretary Thomson prepared to call the roll of the colonies. It would be the last time the provinces would be called “colonies.” The moment this vote was completed, the provinces would be transformed from British colonies into American states.

All knew the measure would carry. Even so, an air of suspense, perhaps apprehension, swathed the chamber. Some worried that this most crucial of decisions would carry by a margin that was disappointingly short of unanimity. Even more, each delegate understood that if America lost the war, the members of a Congress that had declared American independence—a rogue assembly from the start, in Parliament's eyes—would be marked men.

Secretary Thomson may have called the roll in alphabetical order, beginning with Connecticut. Wolcott had gone home, but his two colleagues, Sherman and Samuel Huntington, voted for independence. There had never been any doubt about Huntington's support for cutting ties with the mother country. A forty-five-year-old lawyer from Norwich who had entered Congress in January, he and William Ellery of Rhode Island were the only delegates who had been active members of a Sons of Liberty chapter.

Delaware may have been next. To the astonishment of some delegates, Delaware's delegation had swelled to three members. Caesar Rodney, who had not attended a session of Congress for nearly four weeks, had joined his colleagues Read and McKean. Delaware would not be deadlocked on this day. It would cast a vote.

Few matters in the history of the Continental Congress were the subject of as many legends as those that surrounded Rodney's activities in the weeks prior to July 2. Some yarns had him confined at home in Delaware by sickness—in the popular 1960s musical
1776
, Rodney was depicted as suffering a stroke on the floor of Congress early in June—and others placed him at the bedside of his seriously ill wife, an especially fanciful story as Rodney was a lifelong bachelor.
22
The one thing that the tales agreed on was that in order to be present and cast his historic ballot, Rodney had made a stupendous horseback ride through the dark, rainy night, his mount galloping sixty miles—eighty in some versions—in about twelve hours, which brought him to the Pennsylvania State House just in the nick of time.

Rodney was a forty-eight-year-old veteran politician who had supported the American protest since its inception. John Adams thought him a man of “Sense and Fire, Spirit, Wit and Humour,” though he was “the oddest looking Man in the World. He is tall—thin and Slender as a Reed—pale—his Face is not bigger than a large Apple.” Adams did not mention that Rodney suffered from advanced skin cancer, which had ravaged his nose and spread to one cheek, leading him at times to wear a silk covering to hide the disfiguration.

Statue of Caesar Rodney by James Kelley in Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware. Rodney's vote on July 2, 1776, broke a tie in Delaware's delegation, enabling the state to vote for independence. At home leading the militia against armed Loyalists, Rodney returned to Congress only an hour or two prior to the historic vote. (Historical Society of Delaware)