CHAPTER III.

INDEPENDENCE AND THE NEW STATES

THE thought of independence in the minds of the colonists was of surprisingly slow growth. The feeling of dependence on the mother-country and of loyalty to the king were deep-rooted and died hard. Even union, which was a pre-requisite to a successful struggle for independence, came slowly. The old New England Confederation, in 1643-84, between Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, for defence against Indians, Dutch, and French, ended without ever having manifested the slightest vigor. In the latter half of the seventeenth century Virginia had alliances with some sister colonies for protection against Indians; but there was no call for a general congress until the French and Indian attack on Schenectady, in 1690, during King William's War. Representatives from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Plymouth met that year at New York; letters came from Virginia, Maryland, and Rhode Island. But no permanent union was proposed here, nor at any of the similar meetings, seven at least, which occurred between 1690 and 1750.

The Albany Convention, which met in 1754 to

prepare for the French and Indian War, adopted a plan for union presented by Franklin, providing for a president-general appointed and supported by the crown, and for a grand council of delegates elected triennially by the colonies according to population, and empowered, within limits, to lay taxes and make laws for the common interest of English America. Franklin believed that the adoption of this scheme would have postponed the Revolution a century. But, as it gave so much power to the king, it was rejected by the people in every colony.

Even after English oppression and the diligent agency of committees of correspondence had brought union, and delegates from the colonies had met again and again in Congress, the thought of breaking away from the mother-land was strange to the minds of nearly all. The instructions to the delegates to the first Congress, in September, 1774, gave no suggestion of independence. On the contrary, colony after colony urged its representatives to seek the restoration of "harmony and union" with England. This Congress branded as "calumny" the charge that it wished "independency." Washington wrote, from the Congress, that independence was then not "desired by any thinking man in America."

The feeling was much the same in 1775. Pennsylvania "strictly" commanded her representatives to dissent from any "proposition that may lead to separation." Maryland gave similar instructions in January, 1776. Independence was neither the avowed nor the conscious object in defending

Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. Washington's commission as commander-in-chief, two days later, gave no hint of it. And the New Hampshire legislature so late as December 25, 1775, in the very act of framing a new state government, "totally disavowed" all such aim. In the fall of 1775 Congress declared that it had "not raised armies with the ambitious design of separation from Great Britain."

The swift change which, a little more than six months later, made the Declaration of Independence possible and even popular, has never yet been fully explained. In May, 1775, John Adams had been cautioned by the Philadelphia Sons of Liberty not to utter the word independence. "It is as unpopular," they said, in " Pennsylvania and all the Middle and Southern States as the Stamp Act itself." Early in 1776 this same great man wrote that there was hardly a newspaper in America but openly advocated independence. In the spring of 1776 the conservative Washington declared, "Reconciliation is impracticable. Nothing but independence will save us." Statesmen began to see that longer delay was dangerous, that permanent union turned upon independence, and that, without a government of their own, people would by and by demand back their old constitution, as the English did after Cromwell's death. "The country is not only ripe for independence," said Witherspoon, of New Jersey, debating in Congress, "but is in danger of becoming rotten for lack of it."

Colony after colony now came rapidly into line. Massachusetts gave instructions to her delegates

in Congress, virtually favoring independence, in January, 1776. Georgia did the same in February, South Carolina in March. Express authority to "concur in independency came first from North Carolina, April 12th, and the following May 31st Mecklenburg County in that State explicitly declared its independence of England. On May 1st Massachusetts began to disuse the king's name in public instruments. May 4th, Rhode Island renounced allegiance almost in terms. On May 15th brave old Virginia ordered her delegates in Congress to bite right into the sour apple and propose independence. Connecticut, New Hampshire, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania took action in the same direction during the following month.

The king's brutal attitude had much to do with this sudden change. The colonists had nursed the belief that the king was misled by his ministers. A last petition, couched in respectful terms, was drawn up by Congress in the summer of 1775, and sent to England. Out of respect to the feelings of good John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, who still clung to England, this address was tempered with a submissiveness which offended many members. On its being read, Dickinson remarked that but one word in it displeased him, the word "Congress; to which Colonel Ben Harrison, of Virginia, retorted that but one word in it pleased him, and that "Congress" was precisely the word.

The appeal was idle. The king's only answer was a violent proclamation denouncing the Americans as rebels. It was learned at the same time that he was preparing to place Indians, negroes,

and German mercenaries in arms against them. The truth was forced upon the most reluctant that the root of England's obduracy was in the king personally, and that further supplications were useless. The surprising success of the colonial arms, the shedding of blood at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill-all which, remember, antedated the Declaration-the increase and the ravages of the royal army and navy in America, were all efficient in urging the colonists to break utterly and forever from the mother-country.

The behavior of the Gaspé officers in Narragansett Bay, their illegal seizures, plundering expeditions on shore, and wanton manners in stopping and searching boats, illustrate the spirit of the king's hirelings in America at this time. At last the Rhode Islanders could endure it no longer. Early on the morning of June 9, 1772, Captain Abraham Whipple, with a few boat-loads of trusty aides, dropped down the river from Providence to what is now called Gaspé Point, six or seven miles below the city, where the offending craft had run aground the previous evening in giving chase to the Newport-Providence packet-boat, and after a spirited fight mastered the Gaspé's company, put them on shore, and burned the ship. There would be much propriety in dating the Revolution from this daring act.

Nor was this the only case of Rhode Island's forwardness in the struggle. December 5, 1774, her General Assembly ordered Colonel Nightingale to remove to Providence all the cannon and ammunition of Fort George, except three guns,