Independence (61 page)

That stopped the peace commissioners in their tracks until the first battle in the campaign for New York was fought. The British army began landing on Long Island in August. Their blow fell on August 27, just two weeks after the last grand American celebration of independence had occurred in Savannah. The Continentals were routed in a brief engagement that culminated with thousands of American soldiers breaking and running in a panic for the safety of redoubts in Brooklyn Heights. American losses were heavy—nearly 1,500 killed, wounded, or captured, including two rebel generals, John Sullivan, who had fared poorly in Canada, and William Alexander, who called himself Lord Stirling.

Given this American debacle—pretty much what many in North's ministry and Parliament had predicted would occur on American battlefields—the Howes made one final stab at a meeting with the representatives of Congress. Lord Howe dined with Sullivan. The admiral advised his captive that he was empowered to make a just peace, adding unofficially that he could make real concessions to the colonists. Would Sullivan carry his message to Congress? Sullivan consented, and early in September he passed on to the deputies the substance of Howe's remarks.
20

Hardly a congressman believed the Howes' were prepared to engage in serious discussions. Instead, they suspected that the real objective of the Howes was to sow deep, harmful divisions inside and outside Congress. John Adams raged that it was the Howes' intent “to seduce us into a renunciation of our independence” by crippling American morale. Their offer to talk was “an Ambuscade, a mere insidious Manoeuvre, calculated only to decoy and deceive.”
21
But Adams and his fellow deputies also feared that if Congress refused to talk, the public would blame it for “the Odium of continuing this War.” Boxed in, Congress wrangled for four days over whether to send negotiators to meet with the Howe brothers before finally deciding that it had no choice but to parley.
22

Congress dispatched three of its own to meet with North's peace commissioners: John Adams, Franklin, and Rutledge. On September 11 they met with Lord Howe—General Howe, who was about to invade Manhattan Island, was busy—in what Adams thought was a shabby house on Staten Island. Adams subsequently described how he and his colleagues “walked up to the House between Lines of Guards of Grenadiers, looking as fierce as ten furies.” Howe greeted the American envoys cordially and treated them to a dinner of ham, mutton, tongues, bread, and claret.
23

Once Howe got down to business, it was readily apparent that these discussions would not be fruitful. The admiral began by saying that he had no authority to recognize American independence. It was too bad, he went on, that they could not have talked just after Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition, as it could have resulted in “an Accommodation to the Satisfaction of both Countries.” Nevertheless, it was “His Majesty's most earnest desire to make his American Subjects happy, to cause a reform” leading to the “Redress of any real Grievances.” Taxing the colonists was of little importance to Great Britain, he continued. It was America's “Commerce [and] her strength, her Men, that we chiefly wanted.” Howe concluded his remarks with a question: “Is there no way of treading back this Step of Independency, and opening the door to a full discussion?”

Franklin was the first to respond. The American people “could not expect Happiness now under the
Domination
of Great Britain.… [A]ll former Attachment was obliterated.… America could not return again to the Domination of Great Britain.” Adams spoke next, saying that “all the Colonies had gone compleately through a Revolution” and that American independence was the wish of “all the Colonies.” He added that he personally had no wish “to depart from the Idea of Independency.” Rutledge next told Howe that Britain's days of utilizing America's strength for its own ends were over, but that if London formed “an Alliance with her as an independent state,” it could reap the advantages of trade with the United States.

If those were America's sentiments, Howe responded, “he could only lament it was not in his Power to bring about the Accommodation he wished.” When the envoys pressed Howe about the generous terms that he had mentioned to Sullivan, Howe responded that the general must have misunderstood him. Franklin had very nearly the final word. “[W]ell my Lord,” he said, “as America is to expect nothing but unconditional Submission … and Your Lordship has no Proposition to make us,” there was no point in continuing the discussion.
24

Though Independence was declared in July 1776, whether the United States would survive the war and achieve independence was uncertain until the pivotal victory at Yorktown in October 1781. It was a victory made possible by the French alliance that the pro-independence forces had coveted, and had understood was possible only through a declaration of American independence. But whereas Samuel Adams and others had believed that France would ally with the United States immediately after independence was declared, the French proved to be wary. France did not commit to an alliance until early 1778, waiting to be sure that it was not backing a losing cause. The American victory at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777 convinced French leaders that the combination of French naval power and the prowess of the successful Continental army could rapidly bring London to the peace table. France nearly miscalculated. Great Britain held on for forty-two months after the alliance was signed, during which America's economy collapsed and its military capabilities grew steadily more questionable. Had the Franco-American victory at Yorktown not occurred, the odds were considerable that the allies would have had to accept a treaty dictated by a European peace conference.
25

Lord North remained the British prime minister until a few weeks after word of Yorktown reached London. In 1778, after Saratoga, he at last sought peace and reconciliation by offering bold measures of imperial reform. When North presented his peace plan to Parliament that winter, he did so in a lengthy speech that one observer characterized as the prime minister's “confession and humiliation.” North's turnabout was precisely what Dickinson had predicted would happen. Presciently, Dickinson had told Congress in 1775 and 1776 that after a short, brutal war, Great Britain would be willing to give the Americans everything the First Continental Congress had demanded in 1774. In the House of Commons, Charles James Fox bluntly told North that his peace proposals were essentially what the opposition had urged the government to offer rather than rushing to make war. Among other things, North proposed:

repudiation of Parliamentary taxation of the colonies;

recognition of the Continental Congress;

suspension of all American legislation enacted since 1763;

never again keeping a standing army in America during peacetime;

never again changing a colony's charter without the colonists' consent;

assistance to help the colonies retire their war debt; and

consideration of American representation in the House of Commons.
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North's proposals were generous, but they came too late. America not only had decided in 1776 that it wanted to be free of Great Britain, but flushed with the great victory at Saratoga, it also knew that its long-coveted alliance with France was at hand. Furthermore, Congress was certain that the Franco-American allies could procure American independence. So the war continued until Yorktown.

It was left to Lord Germain, who, like North, had stayed on through the long war, to bring the prime minister the news of the catastrophe at Yorktown. North, Germain said later, received the tidings “as he would have taken a ball in the breast.” Pacing the floor in agitation, North exclaimed: “Oh God, it is all over!”
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He had never been more correct.

Eight who signed the Declaration of Independence did not live to see the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War in 1783. Two were dead within a year of July 4, 1776. John Morton perished of natural causes. Button Gwinnett was killed in a duel. More than half of the signers were gone by the time John Adams was sworn in as president of the United States in 1797. By the time Jefferson's presidency ended in 1809, only sixteen were left. Adams and Jefferson, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who had not been in Congress to vote for independence, were the last of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence still living in America's jubilee year, 1826.

One reason Elbridge Gerry had been so eager to sign the Declaration of Independence was that he anticipated doing so would further his ambition for a long, successful public career and might catapult him to lofty heights.
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But for the most part, those who had risen to the top in Congress by 1776 continued to predominate in American public life, and those who were lesser congressmen remained secondary figures. To be sure, all who sat in Congress in 1776 were already important figures in their colonies, and most continued to play substantive roles in their states following independence.

The majority of those who sat in Congress on July 2 were gone from that body within a couple of years, but nearly all went on to hold a state office at one time or another after 1776, mostly in the legislature or on the bench. In 1789, Robert R. Livingston gained a minute of national prominence. The chief judicial officer in New York, Chancellor Livingston, as he was called, administered the oath of office to President Washington. Seven signers became state governors. Five sat in the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and three others served in their state's ratification convention that passed on the Constitution. Five sat in Congress after 1789 under the new Constitution, two in the House and three in the Senate. President Washington appointed Samuel Chase to the United States Supreme Court in 1796; he was impeached eight years later but was acquitted in the Senate trial. Seven signers served as soldiers during the Revolutionary War; at least two—Wolcott and Lewis Morris—were on the front lines during major campaigns. Franklin and Adams helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the accord that ended the war and garnered British recognition of American independence. According to legend, Franklin attended the signing ceremony wearing the same suit of spotted Manchester velvet that he had worn on the day of his public humiliation in the Cockpit in January 1774. Subsequently, he, Adams, Jefferson, and Gerry all served as United States ministers to European nations.

Some signers experienced rough going during the War of Independence. Several who lived near the fighting had their homes plundered or destroyed. Four were captured by the British. Rutledge, Heyward, and Middleton endured nearly two years of captivity in Florida. Richard Stockton was taken prisoner late in 1776 and during his few weeks of confinement renounced American independence.

Some in Congress who had opposed independence quickly faded into obscurity, but four flourished politically. George Read, whose opposition made it imperative that Caesar Rodney hurry back to Philadelphia before the vote on July 2, went on to serve as Delaware's chief executive and in the 1790s as its United States senator. Likewise, Rutledge served as governor of South Carolina. Robert Morris and James Wilson were the longtime foes of independence who went on to wield the greatest national influence.

Before July 1776, Morris thought his mercantile company more likely to prosper within the British Empire. Afterward, he reluctantly supported independence and openly acknowledged his hope for peace and the restoration of America's pre-war commerce with the former mother country. Morris played a crucial role in keeping the army supplied in late 1776 and 1777. It was his good fortune to grow steadily wealthier throughout the war, until by its end, he was widely thought to be the richest man in the United States. He was also thought by many to have thrived from insider information and the sale of comestibles to the French armed forces while ignoring the Continental army, which after 1778 increasingly lacked the means of paying for needed items. Morris's business ethics eventually provoked Thomas Paine to publish an attack on his “
low dirty Tricks
,” which the essayist thought had introduced a “degree of corruption” into American life. Morris may have acted unethically, but he was wealthy, powerful, and unquestionably shrewd. Those qualities led first to his appointment as the nation's superintendent of finance during the final years of the war and later to his selection as part of Pennsylvania's delegation to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
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Until the last moment, Wilson had resisted independence, fearing the radical political and social change that might be unleashed by the American Revolution. He voted for independence and signed the Declaration, but he spent the Revolution fighting against the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, which established the most democratic government in America. He and Pennsylvania's other conservatives eventually won their fight, replacing the state's first constitution with a charter that virtually guaranteed control by the elite. Thereafter, Wilson joined the fight to create a strong central government. He, too, sat in the Constitutional Convention, where he played a more substantive role than Morris. Indeed, political scientist Clinton Rossiter concluded that Wilson was second only to James Madison in importance at the Convention, where he worked tirelessly, and ultimately successfully, to fashion a national government under which it would be extremely difficult to bring about meaningful change. He was subsequently nominated for the United States Supreme Court by President Washington and served as an associate justice for nine years.
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America's political history has always been filled with unexpected twists and turns. Among the most astonishing was that John Dickinson went on to play a greater role in shaping the new American nation than did Samuel Adams. Even Dickinson, in his final speech against independence, had said that he suspected his political career was over. He left Congress following the vote on independence and commanded his militia battalion for three months. He resigned his commission in September, having lost the confidence of his men and the Pennsylvania government, neither of which thought it right for a foe of independence to lead soldiers in a war that was being waged to set America free of Great Britain. Dickinson took up arms again as a private in a militia company and he was in harm's way during the campaign that was fought after the British army invaded Pennsylvania in 1777. Subsequently, Dickinson served as the chief executive of Delaware, sat on its Supreme Executive Council, and in 1787 was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where he worked for the federal system that he had cherished and longed to bring about within the Anglo-American Empire.