Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (79 page)

Any chance of reconciliation was rapidly slipping away. What Franklin, writing from London, had earlier described as `the idle Notion of the Dignity and Sovereignty of Parliament, which they are so fond of',78 made it almost impossible for Lord North to grant concessions under pressure. Similarly, the more radically minded in the Congress, like John Adams of Massachusetts and Patrick Henry of Virginia, had no confidence in a British parliament which they regarded as irredeemably corrupt. As he prepared for his return to his native country in the early spring of 1775, even Franklin, who had struggled for so long to keep alive his vision of an empire of liberty, had lost all real faith in the possibilities of union and reconciliation between Britain and the colonies: `when I consider the extream Corruption prevalent among all Orders of Men in this old rotten State, and the glorious publick Virtue so predominant in our rising country, I cannot but apprehend more Mischief than Benefit from a closer Union ... To unite us intimately, will only be to corrupt and poison us also.'79

As the colonies trained their militias and built up stocks of arms and ammunition in preparation for a war they did not want, there was still a lingering hope that, in standing firm for their British rights, they would save those rights not only for themselves but also for a mother country too deeply mired in corruption to see how far its liberties had been eroded by the tyrannical exercise of power. Even now it was not too late for the British to awake from their sleep. But the opposition groups at Westminster failed to rise to the occasion, and no British revolution came.80 The second Continental Congress, convened in May 1775 after Lexington and Concord, would have to address the consequences of the unpalatable truth that, with no help to be expected from Britain, the colonies would be forced to fend for themselves. For its part, the British government, for too long misled by over-optimistic colonial officials into underestimating the gravity of the situation in the colonies, was now belatedly awaking to the fact that they were in a state of rebellion. By the middle of June it had accepted the reality of war.81 That same month, Congress appointed George Washington to take command of the Massachusetts citizen army that had been fighting General Gage and his men, and entrusted him with the task of converting it into a genuinely continental, and professional, force.

The appointment of a Virginian as commander-in-chief was not only a practical but also a symbolic move, uniting under a single military leadership the fighting men of colonies very different in composition and outlook, and keenly aware of those differences. The Middle and Southern Colonies were congenitally suspicious of New Englanders. `We are well aware', a merchant once remarked, ,of the intentions of the New England Men, they are of the old King Killing breed. 12 In commenting on the structure of the new army, John Adams, on the other hand, noted the difference of character from the standpoint of a New Englander. Unlike the New England yeomen, he considered that the common people of the South were `very ignorant and very poor', while southern gentlemen were `accustomed, habituated to higher Notions of themselves and the distinction between them and the common People, than We are'.83 The continuing challenge would be to hold this disparate coalition together, and the most effective of all the forces making for unity would be the experience of war.

The decision of Lord North's government to wage war on the Americans as if they were a foreign enemy, deploying against them the full panoply of British naval and military power, forced the Congress inexorably towards a radical reassessment of the relationship between the colonies and the king. Their dispute had traditionally been a dispute with a British parliament that made unacceptable claims to intervene in their affairs. Their loyalty, however, was not to a corrupt and self-aggrandizing parliament but to the monarch, whom they regarded as the sole source of legitimate authority. `He it is', wrote Alexander Hamilton, `that has defended us from our enemies, and to him alone we are obliged to render allegiance and submission."' But disillusionment was spreading, and the convenient image of a benevolently disposed monarch could not indefinitely withstand the uncomfortable realities of 1774-5. George III, by all accounts, was adamant for war. He showed no inclination to accept petitions from his American subjects, and in the aftermath of the battle at Bunker Hill was reported to be busily negotiating with his European fellow monarchs for the recruitment of mercenaries to fight in America.85 By proclaiming in August 1775 that the Americans were rebels, and ordering war against them, he had effectively destroyed the compact that bound them to their king.

Yet residual loyalty remained strong, just as, some forty years later, it would remain strong in Spanish America when the creoles were similarly faced by evidence of the complicity of Ferdinand VII in ordering their oppression.86 Washington acknowledged this continuing loyalty as late as April 1776: `My countrymen I know, from their form of government, and steady attachment heretofore to royalty, will come reluctantly into the idea of independence. 117 The radicals had their sights fixed - some of them since 1774 or even earlier" - on independence as the only way out of the impasse. There were many, however, like John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, who still hankered after a return to an imagined golden age before 1763. The first Continental Congress expressed this hope in its `Address to the Peoples of Great Britain': `Place us in the same condition that we were at the close of the last war, and our former harmony will be restored.'89 But to increasing numbers the escalation of conflict in the spring of 1775 was now making independence look like the only alternative to surrender. `The middle way', wrote John Adams, `is no way at all. If we finally fail in this great and glorious contest, it will be by bewildering ourselves in groping for the middle way.'90

Congress in effect was already operating as a sovereign authority, but as Washington wrote in May 1776: `To form a new Government, requires infinite care and unbounded attention; for if the foundation is badly laid the superstructure must be bad ...'91 This foundation was to be laid in the following weeks, although it had first to be preceded by the work of demolition. Tom Paine's Common Sense, anonymously published as the work of `an Englishman' in January 1776, achieved the required explosive result. In its first three months, according to Paine, it sold 120,000 copies.92

The clarity of Paine's argument and the forcefulness of his rhetoric swept everything before them. Drawing equally on John Locke's minimalist ideas about the purpose of government - to provide `freedom and security' in Paine's words, including security not only for property but also for the free practice of religion93 - and on the radical tradition of the Commonwealthmen, he began with a blistering attack on monarchy and hereditary succession, and was dismissive of `the so much boasted constitution of England'.94 In the opinion of John Adams, the author had `a better hand at pulling down than building'.95 Yet after tearing down the edifice with a ferocious enthusiasm well calculated to play on popular emotions and incite to violent action, Paine went on to mount a powerful case for independence and union that was equally well calculated to appeal to the large body of moderate opinion which still hesitated to take the plunge. His argument was all the more effective for being set in a world-historical context:

The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent - of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. 16

The logic of these stirring words pointed inexorably to the establishment of an independent republic - `... the most powerful of all arguments, is, that nothing but independence, i.e. a continental form of government, can keep the peace of the continent and preserve it inviolate from civil wars.'97 To establish a republic on a `continental' scale, however - a republic in which `the law is king'98 - would mean a massive leap into the unknown.99 Those European republics still surviving in a monarchical age - Venice, the Swiss Confederation, the Dutch Republic and a clutch of city states - were relatively small polities. They were also thought to be constitutionally prone to descending into venal oligarchy or succumbing to the power of the mob. In spite of the successes of the Dutch Republic, the precedents hardly appeared encouraging. loo Paine, however, was a man who had no use for precedents. At a time when the British constitution, which had once dazzled by its glory, was losing its halo among growing numbers of colonists,10' Paine described it as fatally vitiated by the corrupting presence of monarchy and hereditary rule. His sights were set on the future, not on the past. `We have it in our power to begin the world over again."02

A vision cast in terms of the future could be expected to resonate powerfully in colonial American society. For the best part of two centuries preachers had encouraged New Englanders to see their country as occupying a special place in God's providential design.103 The evangelical preachers of the Great Awakening gave millenarian wings to this message as they carried it through the colonies. Was not the millennium likely to begin in America, as Jonathan Edwards pro- claimed?'04 Millennial prophecy, with its vision of a state of bliss to come, rode well in consort with a republican ideology designed to begin the world again. Underlying both images was the perception of the New World of America as a genuinely new world. The ill-informed criticisms of European commentators were an inducement to Americans to open their eyes to see and appreciate the unique nature of their land. That uniqueness would in due course find expression in a novel and constitutionally unique form of political community.

It was the dangerous, and potentially disastrous, developments of the spring and summer of 1776 that produced the convergence of revolutionary energy and revolutionary ideas needed to break the ties of empire and bring a self-governing American republic into being. The military campaign launched by Congress in 1775 to bring Canada into the union was collapsing, leaving the northern frontiers of New York and New England exposed to British and Indian attack; British land and naval forces were massing against New York; and George III, insisting on the reassertion of royal authority before there could be any talk of peace, was reported to have contracted for Hessian mercenaries to reinforce his army in America.105

Faced with the collapse of civil authority, individual colonies, led by New Hampshire and North Carolina, were already starting to write their constitutions, and on 15 May 1776 Congress recommended `the respective Assemblies and Conventions of the United Colonies ... to adopt such a government as shall ... best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular, and America in general'.106 On the same day, the Virginia Convention instructed its delegates in Philadelphia to propose that Congress `declare the United Colonies free and independent States'.107 With varying degrees of enthusiasm and reluctance, and driven forward by a combination of popular pressure, political manipulation and the sheer momentum of events, one after another of the United Colonies fell into line.

The conservative-dominated Assembly of Pennsylvania, whose foot-dragging over the move to independence had so enraged John Adams and his fellow radicals in the Congress, was an early casualty. Philadelphia, with its vibrant artisan culture, was already a strongly politicized city when Thomas Paine arrived there from England in the autumn of 1774 (fig. 4). Ten years earlier Franklin had mobilized the city's mechanics, craftsmen and shopkeepers in his campaign to replace proprietary with royal government, and the non-importation movement in the early 1770s stirred a fresh round of agitation among artisans who resented the dominance of the merchant oligarchs and wanted protection against competition from British manufactures. These were people who had a strong sense of the importance of self-improvement and self-help, and Paine's Common Sense, with its plain man's arguments for independence presented in a plain man's prose, had an enormous impact on them as they snapped up their freshly printed copies and rehearsed its arguments in taverns and coffee-houses. Service in the militia companies and participation in the various civic committees that sprang up in 1775-6 were giving them a growing sense of empowerment. When a group of radicals, including Paine, seized the initiative and launched their challenge to the dominance of the Pennsylvania Assembly and the merchant elite, the artisans and lower orders made their power felt at public meetings and on Philadelphia's streets. 108

With a well-spring of popular support in Philadelphia, and in a Pennsylvania west country which had long resented its political marginalization, the radicals exploited the congressional resolution of 15 May to press forward with their plans for a Convention. This met on 18 June. By the time the Pennsylvania Assembly met again in mid-August after an adjournment, a new constitution had been drawn up by the Convention, which had effectively seized control of government. The most radical and democratic of all the new American constitutions, it followed Paine in rejecting the British principle of balanced government, created a unicameral legislature, and gave the suffrage to all tax-paying freemen over the age of 21.109 In New York, by contrast, the congressional resolution, combined with the landing of British troops at Staten Island, gave conservatives the opportunity to outmanoeuvre the radicals to their left and the Tory loyalists to their right, and to seize the initiative in moving towards independence on their own terms.110

The Convention called by Virginia, the fourth colony to avail itself of the congressional authorization to devise a new form of government, adopted its new constitution on 29 June 1776, after approving earlier in the month a Declaration of Rights. This, like the Bill of Rights adopted by the first Continental Congress in 1774, was inspired by the English Declaration of Rights of 1689, which had formally ended the reign of James II and inaugurated that of William and Mary.111 In searching for a legitimate device for terminating one form of government and installing another, colonial elites looked instinctively to the Whig constitutional tradition in which they had been raised.