[668] There is a slight conflict of testimony in private records—for we have none that are official—as to some of the details in the preparation of the Declaration. John Adams, trusting to his memory, wrote in his Autobiography (cf. Works, ii. 512), twenty-eight years after the transaction, and again in a letter to Timothy Pickering, forty-seven years after it (cf. Life of Pickering, iv. 463), and when he was in his eighty-eighth year, substantially to the same effect, namely, that Jefferson and himself were appointed by their associates a sub-committee to make the draft. Jefferson (Mem. and Corresp., iv. 375), on reading this letter, published in 1823, wrote to Madison denying this statement, and making another, relying on notes which he had made at the time. He says there was no sub-committee, and that when he himself had prepared the draft he submitted it for perusal and judgment separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, each of whom made a few verbal alterations in it. These he adopted in a fair copy which he reported to the committee, and on June 28th to Congress, where, after the reading, it was laid on the table. On July 1st Congress took up for debate Mr. Lee's resolution for independence. Nine colonies—New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia—voted for the resolution. The two delegates of Delaware were divided. South Carolina and Pennsylvania voted against it. The New York delegates affirmed that they approved it, but that their instructions at present did not warrant their voting for it; but on July 9th a New York convention ratified it. Rutledge moved for a day's delay, which being granted, South Carolina accorded. A third delegate coming by post from Delaware turned that colony to the affirmative. Two substituted delegates from Pennsylvania carried that province. The roll of the thirteen colonies was now in union. On the same day, July 2d, and the two days following, Jefferson's draft was under debate, and was amended in committee of the whole. The author of the instrument leaves us to infer that he sat in an impatient and annoyed silence through the ordeal of criticism and objection passed upon it. The two principal amendments were the striking out a severe censure on "the people of England", lest "it might offend some of our friends there." and the omission of a reprobation of slavery, in deference to South Carolina and Georgia. When the committee reported to Congress, such notes of the debates as we have inform us, that, with much vehemence, discordance, remonstrance, and pleadings for delay, with doubts as to whether the people were ready for and would ratify the Declaration, it secured a majority of one in the count of the delegates. Jefferson said that John Adams was "the colossus" in that stirring debate.
There is no occasion here for a critical study or estimate of the Declaration, either as a political manifesto or as a literary production. Its rhetoric, as we know, was at the first reading of it regarded as excessive,—needlessly, perhaps harmfully, severe. That has ever since been the judgment of some. But Jefferson, Franklin, and John Adams, men of three very different types of mental energy and styles of expressing themselves, accorded in offering the document. The best that can be said of it is, that it answered its purpose, was fitted to meet a crisis and to serve the uses desired of it. Its terse and pointed directness of statement, its brief and nervous sentences, its cumulating gathering of grievances, its concentration of censure, and its resolute avowal of a decided purpose, not admitting of temporizing or reconsideration, were its effective points. Dating from its passage by the Congress, and its confidently assured ratification by the people, it was to announce a changed relation and new conditions for future intercourse between a now independent nation and a repudiated mother country. The resolve was sustained. Henceforward, whatever proffers, threats, appeals of amity, for readjustment of quarrels, or for harmony, might come from king or Parliament, or through commissioners, must proceed after the diplomatic fashion, on the admission that the negotiation was no longer between a government and its revolted subjects, but between two distinct sovereignties.
[669] It might be regarded as a matter of course that no parliamentary or other official proceeding or document of the British government would recognize, by way of examination or controversy, the crowning state paper of the American Congress. Chagrin, contempt, vengeful feelings, or a simple regard for its own dignity, may have induced the government to assume indifference. As yet the Declaration was a paper assertion of what was not then secured. But the English press was neither silent nor respectful about the Declaration. An able pamphlet appeared as An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress (London, 1776). Another pamphlet, at first privately circulated, afterwards published, was written by Governor Hutchinson, then in England, entitled Strictures on the late Declaration of Congress. It is reprinted anonymously in Almon's Remembrancer, iv. 25. The writer says that the reasons given in the Declaration to justify it are "false and frivolous." He sent a copy of this pamphlet to the king, with an obsequious letter. Adolphus, after saying "that at no preceding period of history was so important a transaction vindicated by so shallow and feeble a composition", adds that "some passages are remarkable for low and intemperate scurrility", (vol. ii. 405, 406).
[670] A shining exception to the sweep of Judge Jones's assertion is found in the case of that gifted and eminent man, Dr. William Samuel Johnson, first Senator in the Constitutional Congress from Connecticut, and president of Columbia College. Though not a clergyman, he had been a lay reader in the Episcopal Church, as inheriting from his distinguished father, and accepting through his own convictions, its doctrine and discipline. Strongly conservative, with many fond ties to England and Englishmen from long residence abroad as an agent of his colony, he might naturally have espoused the side of the mother country. Indeed, rather from a suspicion that he would do so than from any overt act of his, he was arrested on an occasion of popular excitement, in 1779. But he proved to be among the wisest and firmest of patriots. See his Life, by Dr. E. E. Beardsley, 2d edition, Boston, 1886.
[671] Reflections, etc., p. 115.
[672] The History of the American Episcopal Church, 1587-1883, by Bishop W. S. Perry, Boston, 1885, vol. i. chap. xxiv., "The Position of the Clergy at the Opening of the War for Independence."
[673] On the records of the New York Provincial Congress, or Convention, is a letter dated July 11, 1776, drafted by Gouverneur Morris, and addressed to Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, which contains the following remarkable proposition: "We take the liberty of suggesting to your consideration the propriety of taking some measures for expunging from the Book of Common Prayer such parts, and discontinuing in the congregations of all other denominations all such prayers, as interfere with the interests of the American cause. It is a subject we are afraid to meddle with. The enemies of America have taken great pains to insinuate into the minds of the Episcopalians that the church is in danger. We could wish that the Congress would pass some resolve to quiet their fears, and we are confident it would do essential service to the cause of America at least in this State." Happily Hancock did not act on this suggestion. Congress might indeed have issued a revised edition of the English Liturgy; but a censorship of the utterances of extemporaneous prayers would have been beyond its range. These extemporaneous devotions were doubtless at the time sufficiently patriotic.
[674] See ante, chapter i.
[675] The writings of Samuel Adams abound in the expression of opinions similar to the following from the pen of his cousin, John Adams: "If Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of England, with all its creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, and titles, and prohibit all other churches, as conventicles and schism-shops" (Works, x. 287, 288).
[676] See The Pulpit of the American Revolution: or, the Political Sermons of the Period of 1776. With a Historical Introduction, Notes, and Illustrations. By John Wingate Thornton. (Boston, 1860.) It contains Election and Thanksgiving sermons by Dr. Mayhew, Dr. Chauncy, Mr. Cook, Mr. Gordon, Dr. Langdon, Mr. West, Mr. Payson, Mr. Howard, and President Stiles, all of them eminent and able divines of Massachusetts and Connecticut, fearlessly bold, yet guided by wisdom.