Independence (20 page)

In early December, Dartmouth, through his informants, had learned that Galloway’s constitutional reform plan had been narrowly rejected by Congress. Around the same time, he also received official word of what else Congress had done. The American secretary had reacted positively toward Galloway’s proposal, but as it had been discussed in secret by Congress, he could hardly respond to it, at least in any official manner. However, it should have been clear to any perceptive politician—and it seems to have been to Dartmouth—that serious divisions had existed within Congress. While Congress had adopted a trade stoppage, it had not only appealed to the king in a deferential fashion but also urged a return to colonial policies that, until a decade earlier, had been in place for 150 years. Furthermore, Galloway’s compromise proposal had been defeated by a narrow vote. Clearly, many in Congress yearned for reconciliation. It appeared to Dartmouth that the way was open to defuse the crisis, or at the very least to avert an immediate showdown, by opening negotiations with the colonists based on Congress’s address to the king. Dartmouth suggested to North that a commission be sent to America to begin discussions.

North took the American secretary’s recommendation to the king, though there was no reason to expect the monarch to acquiesce to Dartmouth’s request. Thirty-six years old in early 1775, George III had come to the throne in 1760. He was agreeable and good-humored, conscientious, and so diligent that he agonized over wasted time. He took pains to present a public persona as a venerable, responsible, modest, and seemly individual. The king had never crossed the Atlantic to visit his colonies. Had he done so, the experience might have recast some of his views. As it was, he had no qualms with the colonial policies that commenced in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War. He had joined in the push for the Stamp Act and looked askance at making concessions when the colonists protested. At the time, he predicted that the American dilemma would be the greatest problem his generation would face, and he was not at all sure that there was sufficient “candour and temper” in Parliament to prudently cope with it. The king did not question Parliament’s passage of the Townshend Duties, and when those levies met with protest, he made no attempt to prevent the deployment of troops in Boston. Nevertheless, until the Boston Tea Party, George III appears to have been disposed toward leniency and was open-minded with regard to searching for a means of settling differences.
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But once he learned of the Boston Tea Party, the king was tough and inflexible, telling Lord North that the colonies were “in a State of Rebellion.” Later, he said that “blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this Country or independent.… [W]e must either master them or totally leave them to themselves, and treat them as Aliens.” On another occasion, the king had advised his first minister that further appeasement would mean the loss of the colonies. The “dye is now cast,” he had said famously, adding that “the Colonies must submit or triumph.… [W]e must not retreat.” When General Gage had privately proposed the suspension of the Coercive Acts, the king not only refused to consider such a step; he also made clear to the cabinet that the general must be replaced by a commander with greater backbone.

Now, on learning what steps the Continental Congress had taken, the monarch predictably remained firm and unbending. He spurned the notion of dispatching a commission to America, fearing it would brand London as weak-kneed and embolden the radical leaders in America. Should negotiations be attempted and fail, he added, it would only further unite the colonists. However, the monarch opposed negotiations primarily because he did not wish to yield on any of the major points in dispute. There would be no negotiations. He made that clear to North: “I do not want to drive them to despair but to Submission.”

But given a couple of weeks to reflect on the matter, the king appeared to waver, if only slightly. He received Congress’s address to him “very graciously” and promised Dartmouth that he would present the entreaty to Parliament. The king even insisted that “reason not passion must point out the proper measures” to be taken. With the holidays on them and Parliament not due to meet until deep into January, George III asked North’s ministry to defer its decision for up to a month so that whatever was decided would be well “digested.”
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When the ministers scattered in December, nothing had been decided. But in the course of three meetings in January the cabinet reached its decision. The contours of its final determination were shaped by several factors. The alarming reports submitted by General Gage were especially influential. He told the cabinet that “popular Fury was never greater” throughout New England. The people in the backcountry “openly threaten Resistance by Arms.” They were stockpiling weapons and ammunition and “threaten to attack any Troops who dare to oppose them.” Gage insisted that “Conciliating, Moderation, Reasoning is over. Nothing can be done but by forceable Means.” He also said that the rebellion was not confined to Massachusetts. Even Pennsylvanians “talk … of taking [up] Arms with an Indifference, as if it were a Matter of little Importance,” the general wrote. Nevertheless, Gage stressed that New England, and especially Massachusetts, was the cockpit of the American rebellion. If the Yankees could be brought to submission, he counseled, the American rebellion would be over. However, Gage cautioned that the pacification of New England might not be easy. It would require an army of at least 20,000 men, and he reminded London that he had only 4,521 under his command. Gage additionally advised that striking the first crumpling blow would be crucial to his success. A successful “first stroke” by his redcoats would “decide a great deal,” he said in one letter. In another, he predicted that a surprise strike “wou’d be fatal” to the rebels.
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Many ministers had previously questioned Gage’s appraisals as unduly pessimistic, but this time his judgment appeared to be confirmed by the daunting assessments by several Crown officials from outside New England. John Penn, Pennsylvania’s proprietary governor, told his superiors in London that winter that the “general temper of the people … here as in other parts of America is very warm.” Similar tidings arrived from every royal governor in the southern colonies. Governor Dunmore reported on “the turbulence and prejudice which prevails” in Virginia. From New Bern, North Carolina, Governor Josiah Martin cleaved to the notion that his subjects were in the thrall of diabolical rebel demagogues. He claimed that the people were moved “to the will of those … [who] practice on their ignorance and credulity” in the same fashion as the “magical wires to the figures in a puppet-show” were pulled by the all-controlling puppeteer. Notification came from Governor William Bull in Charleston that the “spirit of opposition to taxation … is so violent” that “it will not be soon or easily oppressed.” Sir James Wright, the governor of Georgia, had already informed the ministry that most colonists in his province favored independence. The “licentious spirit … has now gone to so great a length and is at such a height” that there was nothing he could do to “settle matters.” Only a pugnacious stand by London, he declared, could favorably resolve the imperial crisis.
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While royal officials in America appeared to say that only force could bring the Americans to heel, there were those in the mother country who urged conciliation. Merchants from thirteen major urban centers flooded the ministry, Parliament, and the Crown with petitions—collectively containing thousands of signatures—asking that the colonists be placated. Some petitions and addresses specifically defended the colonists’ rights against the claims of the government. Some urged the repeal of the Coercive Acts. During the winter of 1775, tradesmen also staged a sizable march through London, observed by large and friendly crowds. The demonstrators advocated the withdrawal of all British troops from the colonies.
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Several pamphleteers rushed into print a variety of reconciliation schemes that winter. One anonymous writer, who insisted that the colonists were due greater rights and liberties as a result of the price they had paid in settling the hostile American wilderness, urged commercial concessions. The right of Americans to trade more freely would add to the colonists’ prosperity, and that in turn would add to Britain’s revenues, he reasoned. “Natural means” will save the empire, the writer said, but “violent measures” will destroy the Anglo-American union. Another pamphleteer proposed an end to parliamentary taxation and the creation of a “Supreme Council” composed of elected representatives from each North American and West Indian colony. This colonial council would be sovereign throughout America, but its decisions would be subject to royal veto. To replace the revenue that might have been realized through colonial taxation, the author advocated that churches in England be taxed.
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But most of the press defended North’s government and urged firmness. Many essayists spun out legalistic arguments demonstrating that there must be a sovereign head to every government. There could be no middle ground, they insisted. Either the colonies must recognize Parliament’s supremacy in all matters, or they must be independent, and the latter choice was intolerable.
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Most editors and writers defended the government’s “judicious” policies and denounced the “wicked and treasonable” colonists. No American, not even Samuel Adams, came in for as much vitriol in the press as Benjamin Franklin. Labeled “old Doubleface,” “Judas,” the “grand incendiary,” and the “living emblem of iniquity,” he was portrayed as the cause of “much of the present troubles in America.” With war likely, one editor predicted that Franklin would soon return to the colonies to see “whether he cannot do more mischief with the Sword than with the Pen.”
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Lord Dartmouth, however, hoped to use Franklin’s pen, and his wits, to prevent swords from being drawn. Once he discovered the lengths of Congress’s defiance, and possibly the minute that he learned of Galloway’s Plan of Union, the American secretary set in motion a covert approach to Franklin. It was Dartmouth’s last-ditch attempt to prevent catastrophe. Aware that Franklin was Galloway’s old friend and political partner, and knowing that the king had not made a final decision regarding sending commissioners to America to negotiate a peaceful settlement, Dartmouth hoped that Franklin could be persuaded to suggest viable terms for reconciliation. If Franklin cooperated, Dartmouth thought there was a chance that the monarch might agree to open negotiations in America. Dartmouth must also have hoped to use Franklin to drive a wedge between the various factions in America, shattering colonial unity and compelling the Americans to abandon all thoughts of armed resistance.

Dartmouth selected David Barclay and John Fothergill to serve as intermediaries. Both were Quakers with ties to Pennsylvania, and each knew Franklin. Barclay, who had invented a home fire protection plan, had become acquainted with Franklin through scientific circles. Fothergill was a physician to both Franklin and Dartmouth. Franklin met with the two during the first week of December and, at their behest, drafted a set of “Hints … of Terms that might probably produce a durable Union between Britain and the Colonies.” Among his proposals: the East India Company was to be compensated by Massachusetts or the Continental Congress for its destroyed tea; Parliament was to repeal the Tea Act and Coercive Acts; Britain was to agree to end its monopolization of American trade; Parliament was to agree not to tax the colonists in peacetime; in wartime, the colonists would pay a land tax equivalent to one quarter of the land tax levy in England; and “all powers of Internal Legislation in the Colonies [were] to be disclaim’d by Parliament.”
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Dartmouth saw at a glance that Franklin’s proposals would go nowhere. They would have required an abject British surrender. But the American secretary did not give up. He arranged a meeting between Franklin and Admiral Richard Howe. Dartmouth probably chose the flag officer because he was seen as a moderate on colonial issues. Furthermore, London was buzzing with rumors that if a peace commission was sent to America, Howe would be one of the commissioners. Given his stature, Howe might persuade Franklin to moderate his demands, which in turn might convince the king to reconsider sending a peace commission across the sea.

Fothergill and Barclay brought about the meeting between Franklin and Howe in a roundabout manner. First, they persuaded the admiral’s sister, Catherine Howe, to invite Franklin to her fashionable Grafton Street residence for an evening of chess shortly before Christmas. Things went well, and she asked him to return for another night of chess on December 28. Whatever Franklin might have expected, Admiral Howe was present when he arrived on that cold winter evening.

Howe was an impressive figure. Tall and swarthy—he was popularly known as “Black Dick” Howe—the admiral was somber and dignified, and in the course of his thirty-five-year naval career he had won a reputation for courage and boldness. After warmly greeting Franklin, Howe lamented his contemptible treatment in the Cockpit a year earlier. With that out of the way, Howe got down to business, telling Franklin that “there was no likelihood of the admission” of his “Hints.” He asked the American to tender a new, more temperate set of proposals. In a blatant attempt at bribery, Howe also promised Franklin that if he cooperated, he could “with reason expect any reward in the power of government to bestow.”