Independence (39 page)

Until October, there appeared to be no likelihood that Congress would agree to a navy. Wartime realities changed that, much as they had compelled a change in the trade policy. On October 5 Congress learned that in mid-August two brigs filled with military supplies had sailed without convoy from London, bound for Quebec. Congress wasted no time creating a committee to consider a response. The committee’s composition was highly unusual. All three members were New Englanders, a sign that Congress wanted action, and quickly. Only one hour after its creation, the committee recommended that the New England colonies be authorized to raise a squadron to intercept the brigs. Congress agreed and sent expresses northward that same day to notify the New England authorities. The next morning, the committee made another recommendation. It urged Congress to commission two armed vessels to cruise for ninety days in search of British shipping. This led to more debate. Zubly declared, “We must have a Navy,” which he argued would protect the coastal trade between the colonies and gather needed intelligence.

Deane jumped in with a proposal to create a navy of at least ten vessels, a squadron equal to the number of warships that Great Britain was expected to send to American waters in 1776. Act now, Deane declared, and “if We get early to Sea [in 1776], these Shipps” can “surprise, & intercept” the troop transports carrying additional redcoats across the Atlantic. That was going too far for many delegates. As the British blockade was concentrated off the New England coast, several delegates wanted only to try to “protect & secure the Trade of New England,” which could be done by a handful of vessels. Congress tabled the proposal to create a navy and authorized only the committee’s proposal to dispatch two armed vessels for a three-month cruise. It was a small victory for those who wanted a naval arm, but it was a victory, and John Adams rejoiced: “We begin to feel a little of the Seafaring Inclination here.”
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A few weeks later, Congress recognized that vessels engaged in the new trade with foreign ports in the West Indies required protection. It created the Naval Committee to look into the matter. Its recommendations triggered the last great debate at this juncture over the creation of a navy. George Wythe of Virginia, who had been in Congress for only a month, made a long, impassioned speech on behalf of a navy, and to some degree he spoke as if America were already independent.

Why should not America have a Navy? No maritime Power, near the Sea Coast, can be safe without it. It is no Chimera. The Romans suddenly built one in their Cartheginian War. Why may We not lay a Foundation for it. We abound with Furs [fir trees], Iron ore, Tar, Pitch, Turpentine. We have all the materials for construction of a Navy.

With a navy, Wythe added, “We shall distress our Enemies.” Moreover, he said, if defended by an American fleet, the “British Navy will never be able to effect our Destruction.” Richard Henry Lee concurred. Until America received help from France—and at the moment, that was no more than “a Glimmering Hope”—America had to supply itself, and for that a navy was required.
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Chase, who had earlier opposed a navy, once again spoke against building a fleet. It was a long speech and, as was his custom, he delivered it in a derisive manner, his irritation and fervor palpable. (John Adams thought Chase was “very sarcastic, and thinks himself very sensible.”) He returned to Willing’s earlier point that the creation of a fleet would jeopardize reconciliation and lead America to break with the mother country, a step that he said would “end in the total destruction of American Liberty.” He again insisted that it was folly to believe that America could ever build a fleet that could compete with the Royal Navy. “G.B. with 20 ships can distroy all our Trade, and ravage our sea Coast—can block up all your Harbours.” The trade embargo remained the “best Instrument [for waging war that] We have.” In time, the loss of its trade with America would bankrupt Great Britain. He reasoned: Southern tobacco alone financed Great Britain’s annual debt; Ireland needed American flax; Britain’s sugar islands were dependent on American grain, fish, and lumber; without American participation, Britain’s African slave trade faced ruin. His conclusion: “Britain can never support a War with Us at the Loss of such a valuable Trade.”
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It was a bitter fight. In the end it was resolved not through hot-tempered rhetoric but, as was rapidly coming to be commonplace, by jolting military news. On October 23—two days after Wythe and Chase clashed—word reached Philadelphia that in mid-October a royal squadron had carried out a devastating raid on Falmouth, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine). Early in the month, the British had dispatched four ships from Boston to “chastize” Falmouth for having fired, albeit without success, on a royal vessel. On October 17 the village was presented with an ultimatum: Surrender all munitions and its leading rebels within twenty-four hours or face destruction. When the town’s leaders refused, the four British vessels subjected the town to a merciless bombardment lasting eight hours. They fired balls, bombs, incendiary shells, and antipersonnel devices into the town, and when civilians were spotted trying to extinguish the flames, the British put ashore a landing party to prevent firefighting activities. By sunset a thick pall of smoke hung like a shroud over what once had been a town. Falmouth’s houses and buildings, its wharves, and the eleven vessels in its harbor had been reduced to ashes.
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With winter rapidly approaching, Falmouth’s entire population had been stripped of shelter. The residents of every coastal city and village expected that they might be the Royal Navy’s next target. (Benjamin Franklin, away on congressional business, wrote home to suggest that his daughter might want to remove her children from Philadelphia, and he added, “remember to secure my Account Books and Writings … in my Library.”)
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Congress was livid. Washington told Congress that Britain’s act was “an Outrage exceeding in Barbarity & Cruelty every hostile Act practised among civilized Nations.” Samuel Adams denounced the “Barbarity of our Enemies,” and for once, every congressman agreed with him. During the next several days, Congress created the Continental navy and voted to raise two battalions of marines. It appropriated $100,000 for the purchase of four existing vessels and their conversion to warships, and it voted to spend $866,000 for the construction of thirteen frigates—about $66,000 per ship.
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Inexorably, each month of war made reconciliation less likely. Hard on the heels of Falmouth, more bad news arrived for those who clung desperately to the hope of the permanence of the Anglo-American union. By midsummer 1775 the royal governors in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina had fled to the safety of British warships or fortifications. Only Georgia’s chief executive remained in the governor’s official residence, but he told North’s ministry that “the powers of government are wrested out of my hands.” He added that he had been reduced to “a mere nominal governor” with “scarce any power left.” All four southern governors spoke wistfully of large loyal populations and predicted that if London would only send help, the British flag would fly once again over their provinces.
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Only Governor Dunmore of Virginia acted unilaterally to crush the rebellion with force.

A forty-three-year-old Scotsman with dark eyes and long black hair, Dunmore had failed to advance either as a soldier or as a member of Parliament. In 1770 he tried a different route to prominence and greater power. He agreed to become the governor of New York. A year later he moved to Williamsburg as Virginia’s royal governor. From the days of the Coercive Acts onward, Dunmore watched helplessly as the defiant rebels took power from him. And when hostilities erupted, he felt personally threatened—with justification. In July, while at Porto Bello, his farm six miles from the capital, he was fired on by a party of rebels. He barely escaped capture or harm. Even before this alarming incident, Dunmore had vowed to resist the “open violences” of the rebels, much of which he laid at the feet of Patrick Henry. By autumn, in possession of two royal vessels—a sloop and a schooner—and three armed merchantmen, and in command of a few score Tories and sixty regulars deployed from Florida, Dunmore commenced open warfare. In October he conducted a series of successful raids against small bands of Virginia militia. The next month he scored a victory in a pitched battle at Great Bridge, below Norfolk. Emboldened by his triumph, Dunmore on November 7 issued a proclamation promising freedom to all rebel-owned slaves who were “able and willing to bear Arms” and joined “his Majesty’s Troops” to help with “the speedy reducing” of Virginia’s rebels to “a proper Sense of their Duty, to His MAJESTY’S Crown and Dignity.” A few weeks later he ordered his small fleet to shell Norfolk, destroying two thirds of the town.
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Word of Dunmore’s proclamation shocked white Southerners. Virginia’s countryside was swept by apprehension that planters would lose their labor force and that bloody slave insurrections would follow. Fearing that Virginia planters who had hitherto supported the rebellion would defect in order to safeguard their property, General Washington told Congress that Dunmore must be stopped. If successful in causing Virginians to defect to Toryism, Washington warned, Dunmore “will become the most formidable Enemy America has—his strength will Increase as a Snow ball by Rolling.” Southern congressmen required no warning from the commander in chief. One member of Virginia’s delegation called Dunmore a “monster” and another railed at his “Diabolical scheme.” North Carolina’s delegates were no less alarmed than their Virginia colleagues. They feared that Dunmore would take his growing army into their province and set free their slaves. To Southern rebels, what Dunmore had done was precisely the sort of abomination by British officials that John Adams had forecast. In December, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina predicted that Dunmore’s act had done “more effectually to work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the Colonies, than any other expedient, which could possibly have been thought of.”
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The mood of the delegates had begun to shift in the ten weeks or so since Congress returned in September from its late-summer recess. For some, the fervent longing to remain part of the British Empire waned. As it did, the dominance of the reconciliationists grew weaker. Worse was to come for those still determined to reconcile with the mother country. Word of the king’s August proclamation asserting that America was in rebellion reached Philadelphia early in November.

“We are all declared Rebels,” a Yankee said, adding with exaltation that most of “those who hoped for Redress … now give … up & heartily join with us in carrying on the War vigorously.” Samuel Ward wrote home that one reconciliationist—sadly, he did not identify him—who had been in the habit of calling his counterparts “Brother Rebel,” declared that he had now received “a sufficient Answer” from the Crown. The congressman, Ward continued, had abandoned his hope for reconciliation and pronounced that he was at last “ready to declare Ourselves independent.” No one was more jubilant than Samuel Adams. The “Councils and Administration” of Lord North, as well as the policies of “our most gracious King,” he crowed, “will necessarily produce the grandest Revolutions the World has ever yet seen.” Adams knew that the choices made by Great Britain’s leaders and the pressures of the war were immeasurably sweeping America headlong toward independence. Not even the “most industrious and able Politicians” could hurry the colonies more rapidly to a final break with the mother country, he said.
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It was in this atmosphere that Congress tackled one final crucial issue before autumn turned to winter in 1775. Since the bloody day of Lexington and Concord, pressure had been building in some provinces to cast aside the old colonial governments under Crown-issued charters and create new ones. After all, few Americans any longer recognized the authority of the royal governors, and most of the king’s courts had long since been closed. In addition, some rebels were growing anxious that, in the unsettled conditions spawned by the absence of legitimate government, unsavory changes might be in the offing. The leaders in some eastern counties were keeping a wary eye on the western counties, where most residents took the Whig rhetoric of self-government and equal representation seriously. Just as Galloway had prophesied a year earlier, the rebellion was churning up the potential for drastic political and social change. Talk of equal representation for westerners in the provincial assembly, fairer taxes for those living on the frontier, and democratic political practices filled the air. Not every rebel wanted to see those changes come about. Even those who were sympathetic worried that substantive domestic change would prove to be so divisive that it would jeopardize the march toward independence.

The issue of creating new provincial governments had come up previously. In June, even before the Continental army had been created, Massachusetts told Congress that its “system of colony administration” was “vigorously opposed by the collected wisdom” of its citizens. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress asked the Continental Congress for its “most explicit advice” concerning what to do regarding its government. The Bay Colony had brought up the matter at the moment when John Adams was emerging as the leader of the more radical faction in Congress, and he was the one who managed this explosive issue. Adams realized at once that authorizing the colonies to create whatever government they desired would be seen by many as a virtual declaration of independence. He also knew that the most conservative colonists would be horrified should any colony institute truly radical political changes. Either occurrence could be fatal to the war effort.