Independence (28 page)

During the spring and summer of 1774, Dickinson played an active role in the public rallies that were designed to force Galloway’s hand. He spoke to an overflow gathering of some three hundred in the City Tavern in June and the following month presided over an outdoor meeting that drew more than eight thousand Philadelphians. Galloway, of course, yielded in the end, but he kept Dickinson out of the First Continental Congress. However, the fall elections brought about the decisive swing in power within the Pennsylvania assembly that enabled Dickinson to enter Congress just prior to its adjournment.

Given the tectonic shift in Pennsylvania politics and Dickinson’s national renown, it was hardly surprising that he would be a major player in the Second Continental Congress. To this point, Dickinson had been seen as a radical—an archfoe of encroaching royal authority, an opponent of the Stamp Act, a critic of the Townshend Duties, and a sworn enemy of the Tea Act and Intolerable Acts. But anyone who perused his writings over the past decade would have found that Dickinson had steadfastly espoused the merits of America’s ties to the British Empire. Furthermore, he had always insisted that Great Britain’s leaders would back down when faced with peaceful protests by the united colonists.

Until 1775, he had been correct. Then came Lexington and Concord. Dickinson had been confident that the measures taken by the First Congress would lead London to assuage the colonists in some way or other. He had been certain that peaceful reconciliation was on the horizon. Instead, war had come. In shock, he declared that London had responded to Congress with a “Rescript … written in Blood.”
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War with the mother country, he thought, was “unnatural & astonishing,” but like every other delegate to this Congress, he supported America’s armed resistance. He believed that Great Britain had launched an “impious War of Tyranny against Innocence,” a “cruel War” brought on by a “mad or villainous … Ministry” dominated “by a few worthless persons,” men whom he referred to as “Fools or Knaves.” America’s cause was “a righteous Cause,” he said, adding, “I hope every Man of Sense & Virtue will draw his Sword.”
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Yet, Dickinson remained attached to reconciliation. Most of those who would be his colleagues when Congress reconvened in May shared his hope that harmony with the mother country could be restored. The great divide between Dickinson and many of his fellow deputies would not come over whether to reconcile with London but over how best to restore the Anglo-American union. Jolted by the outbreak of hostilities, Dickinson appears to have spent the next few weeks in restless contemplation. Few congressmen understood the reality of the imperial troubles, or of the war that lay ahead, with such clarity as did Dickinson.

Before Lexington and Concord, Dickinson had optimistically believed that a unified, tenacious, and peaceful resistance by Congress would be sufficient to topple North’s government and bring on a new ministry committed to peace. The outbreak of war caused the scales to fall from his eyes. Within days of learning of the bloody combat along Battle Road, he concluded that North’s “Ministry will stand.” It enjoyed large majorities in both houses of Parliament and would not face another election for up to seven years. He conceded too that North had been an “artful” leader in the run-up to war, succeeding even in persuading the most influential residents in the homeland that “Great Britain is contesting for her very Existence in this Dispute with America.” It was a bitter truth, he thought, that the actions taken by North’s government were popular with the British people. America had friends in Great Britain, but not enough. There were merchants for whom the war would be economically disastrous, but they had little political influence. Wise men, the likes of Chatham, Camden, and Burke, sat in Parliament and spoke for a “small Band of independent virtuous Spirits” who loathed North’s policies, but they were “personally odious to the King.”

Dickinson was no less sensible—prescient, in fact—about the war. He foresaw a long, difficult conflict, and he worried that wars were unpredictable. He had no doubt that before this conflict ended, Americans would “taste … deeply of that bitter Cup” of adversity. Battles would be lost. Diseases would sweep through the army’s camps. To supply armies spread over a continent as vast as North America would be a demanding, perhaps impossible, assignment. The northern colonies should expect invasions by forces of Canadians and Indians. Slave insurrections in the southern colonies were an all-too-real likelihood. America would face a “forbidding” adversary in the Royal Navy. In the face of such daunting peril, it would be difficult to sustain morale. Dickinson knew that as tribulations increased, and persisted, there would be those who “in a tumultuary Passion or rather Phrenzy for Peace” would “cast away in one Day of Haste & Weakness” all that had been gained “by Years of Blood.” That made it imperative that America engage in a sincere effort to achieve reconciliation before the war became long and bloody and war weariness set in.

The solution that Dickinson hit on was not for Congress to abandon armed resistance, but for it to accompany its war effort with an appeal to the king. The monarch, unlike Lord North and the members of Parliament who represented local districts, was responsible for the security and best interest of the entire British Empire. Dickinson was convinced that the time was right to approach the Crown. Britain “has lost a Battle—& all America is more united & more determined” than those in the mother country could ever have imagined would be the case. Persuading himself that the monarch had not had a hand in the decision to resort to force—he and many other reconciliationists clung to the notion that the war had been brought on solely by a conniving set of ministers—Dickinson believed that the king would want to act to prevent a civil war once he saw that the American people were “vigorously
preparing
” for armed resistance. Furthermore, a petition would demonstrate to the king that the colonists were acting in self-defense and harbored no secret agendas. Even if an appeal to the monarch failed, to have tried for reconciliation would be useful. Should this indeed become a long war, an unsuccessful appeal to the king would unite the colonists, for no one could subsequently say that Congress had “omitted proper applications for obtaining Peace.”

Dickinson was driven by his belief that American prosperity and security stemmed from its ties to the empire, but much like Galloway, he was haunted by a conservative’s fear of the forces for change that so often were unleashed by war. As the leader of the faction that for a decade had represented the disenchanted inhabitants of western Pennsylvania, Dickinson knew full well that many Americans longed for substantive change. He had in fact ridden those cravings as the means of forcing Galloway to permit Pennsylvania to participate in the First Congress. But Dickinson understood that it was easier to start making reforms than to stop making them. Once a reform movement commenced, it built a momentum for further change. “[A] people does not reform with moderation” was how he had put it in one of the
Letters from a Farmer.
He knew, too, that a people driven by the passions of war to hate everything that was British might be especially unrestrained.
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Like Galloway, Dickinson was convinced that shattering political, social, and economic changes could best be prevented by remaining tied to Great Britain. In the absence of a rapid settlement of Anglo-American differences, Dickinson feared the war could have only two possible outcomes. Hostilities might end in a terrible defeat followed by brutal oppression and reprisals. Or, the exigencies of a desperate war would drive Congress to declare independence. If America won the war and achieved independence, Dickinson was certain that such an outcome would bring immeasurably greater tribulations than those threatened by the recent string of British ministries. An independent America would be a strife-filled land of democracy that bore little resemblance to its British past. Moreover, the fragile new American nation would be thrust onto the world stage before it was capable of defending itself against the “rapacious & ambitious Nations” of Europe.

To prevent the horrors that he envisaged, Dickinson believed that Congress must emphasize to the king the colonists’ “Readiness & Willingness at all Times” to commit “our Lives and Fortunes to support, maintain & defend the Interests of his Majesty & and our Mother Country.” He hoped that Congress’s appeal to the Crown would be carried to London by agents of Congress who were empowered to negotiate a peace treaty leading to a constitutional settlement. A “treaty can do Us no Harm” and it “may do Us Good,” he believed.
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Dickinson did not wait long before he opened the fight to appeal for the king’s intercession. Congress had started slowly, leisurely tending to organizational matters as it awaited the arrival of more delegates. Finally, after a “Number of Members arrived” on Monday, May 15, nearly a week behind schedule, Congress went into a committee of the whole to consider “the state of America.” Richard Henry Lee, as was often the case, was the first on the floor. He proposed the creation of a national army to replace the Grand American Army, which was composed entirely of soldiers from the four New England colonies. But this was too fast for some delegates. It was at this point, in fact, that John Rutledge raised the all-important question about the aim of the war: Was this a war for reconciliation or independence?
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John Adams was still suffering from whatever had caused his collapse on the day of his journey to Lexington, but not too ill to enter the debate. He discoursed in what one delegate thought, no doubt correctly, was an “Argumentative” manner. Adams spoke at length, though the essence of what he said was simple. America was not fighting for independence. Nor was it fighting for what the First Congress had sought. In the Declaration of Rights and Grievances adopted the previous October, Congress had recognized Parliament’s power to regulate American trade. That no longer was acceptable. Parliament’s decision to make war on America had changed everything. The colonists could no longer recognize Parliament’s authority in any way, shape, or form. America’s aim was reconciliation with the mother country, but the only British authority the colonists could recognize was that of the king.

The minute Adams concluded, Dickinson was on his feet. If Adams had been contentious, Dickinson likely answered in the combative manner that had long been his custom in floor debates in the Pennsylvania assembly. What is certain is that he aired at least some of his views on patching up differences with the mother country. Like Adams, Dickinson saw reconciliation as the object of the war, but he wished to restore the Anglo-American relationship that had existed prior to 1763, before there were parliamentary taxes and a British army in America in peacetime—a time when the colonists happily acquiesced in Parliament’s regulation of American trade.

With the conflict less than a month old, Congress was divided over what it was fighting for. Some were also put off by what they saw as Yankee extremism in Adams’s remarks. Some from New England, on the other hand, found that Dickinson’s stance “gives … disgust.”
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This spelled trouble, and at the very moment that word was reaching Congress of urgent military issues that needed tending. Congress postponed further debate on America’s war aims for a week, hoping that passions might cool in the interim.

But Congress did not put off the debate strictly from fear of divisions. These were experienced politicians. None expected unanimity on every issue. Nor did they anticipate debates that were free of rancor. They were simply overwhelmed with the number of things they had to deal with. “Such a vast Multitude of Objects, civil, political, commercial and military, press and crowd Us so fast, that We know not what to do first,” John Adams remarked without exaggeration.
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Congress knew that it first must deal with a series of military issues that simply could not be ignored or postponed. It was common knowledge that London was sending reinforcements across the Atlantic, and many believed the destination of some troops would be New York. On May 15 Congress received an inquiry from resistance leaders in New York City asking how the colony should respond if threatened with a landing by the British army. Congress put together a committee—which included George Washington—to consider the matter, and within a few days New York was directed not to resist the redcoats. They were to use force only if the soldiers attacked or invaded homes or businesses.
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Hard on the heels of the New York issue came word of military actions taken by Massachusetts and Connecticut. Fearing a British invasion from Canada, those two colonies, each acting without knowledge of what the other was doing, had raised military forces to seize the British-held installation of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain in New York. Colonel Benedict Arnold commanded the Massachusetts force. Ethan Allen was in charge of the army raised by Connecticut, a band of rowdy frontiersmen who called themselves the Green Mountain Boys. The two small armies set off at about the same time and ran into each other in western Massachusetts. Thereafter, they more or less cooperated in a joint campaign to take the fort. On May 10, the day that Congress reconvened, Allen and Arnold led their men on the last leg of the expedition, a half-mile march along a narrow path that hugged Lake Champlain. They moved with stealth through the early morning darkness, bringing their force to the south side of the British installation. When the men were ready, Allen gave the order to attack. The Yankees charged out of the black night and into the fort, screaming at the top of their lungs. They encountered next to no resistance. The British had posted only two sentries, and both were thoroughly surprised by Allen, who roared that the colonial force was taking Fort Ticonderoga “in the name of the great Jehovah, and the Continental Congress.” The remaining redcoats, forty-two in all, were sound asleep. They were awakened and taken captive, along with twenty-four women and children, and all were herded into the stockade. The entire operation lasted less than ten minutes. Flushed with success, the Americans also took Crown Point, another British fort twelve miles farther north. By the time Congress learned about these actions, it also discovered that Arnold was talking wildly of going after the British post at St. Johns on the Richelieu River, not far from Montreal.
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