CHAPTER IV.
July, 1776—November, 1777.
Consequences of the Declaration of Independence.—Reorganization of the Continental Army.—Flight of the Congress from Philadelphia.—Plan of the Confederation proposed.
When the Declaration of Independence at length came, it did not in any way change the form of the revolutionary government. It created no institution, and erected no civil machinery. Its political effect has already been described. Its moral effect, both upon the members of the Congress and upon the country, was very great, inasmuch as it put an end alike to the hope and the possibility of a settlement of the controversy upon the principles of the English Constitution, for it made the colonies free, sovereign, and independent states. Men who had voted for such a measure, and who had put their signatures to an instrument which the British Parliament or the Court of King's Bench could have had no difficulty in punishing as treasonable, could no longer continue to feed themselves on "the dainty food of reconciliation."[103] Thenceforward, there was no retreat. The colonies might be conquered, overrun, and enslaved; but this, or the full and final establishment of their own sovereignty, were the sole alternatives. The consequence was, that the Declaration was followed by a greater alacrity on the part of the whole body of the Congress to adopt vigorous and decisive measures, than had before prevailed among them.
But there was one feeling which the Declaration did not dispel, and another to which it immediately gave rise, both of which were unfavorable to concentrated, vigorous, and effective action on the part of the revolutionary government. The Declaration of Independence did not dissipate the unreasonable and ill-timed jealousy of standing armies, which gave way, at last, only when the country was in such imminent peril that Washington felt it to be his duty to ask for extraordinary powers, to be conferred upon himself. It was followed, too, as an immediate consequence, by that jealousy with regard to State rights, and that adhesion to State interests, which have existed in our system from that day to the present, and are not entirely separable from it. As the Declaration made the colonies sovereign and independent, and was followed by the formation of State governments, before the creation of any well-defined national system, State sovereignty became at once an ever-present cause of embarrassment to the Congress, in whose proceedings entire delegations sometimes made the interests of the country bend to the interests of their own State, to a mischievous extent.
To explain these observations, we must recur again to the history of the army, and to the efforts of Washington to have the military establishment put into a safe and efficient condition.
After the evacuation of Boston by the British forces, General Washington proceeded, at once, with the continental army to the city of New York, where he arrived on the 13th of April, 1776. The loss of the battle of Long Island on the 27th of August, and the extreme improbability of his being able to hold the city against the superior forces by which it had been invested through the entire summer, made it necessary for him to appeal once more to the Congress for the organization of a permanent army, capable of offering effectual resistance to the enemy. The establishment formed at Cambridge in the autumn previous was to continue for one year only; it was about to be dissolved; and in the month of September General Washington was compelled to abandon the city of New York to the enemy. Before he withdrew from it, he addressed a letter to the President of Congress, on the 2d of September, in which he told that body explicitly that the liberties of the country must of necessity be greatly hazarded, if not entirely lost, should their defence be left to any but a permanent standing army; and that, with the army then under his command, it was impossible to defend and retain the city.[104] On the 20th of the same month, he again wrote, expressing the opinion that it would be entirely impracticable to raise a proper army, without the allowance of a large and extraordinary bounty.[105]